This is a demo Rails app that shows how a SaaS can improve their developer experience and streamline onboarding by eliminating the "point click point click ..." instructions of getting an API key to "Install this CLI and run demodx apitoken create."
You can learn more about Terminalwire at Terminalwire.com or talk to a human and get a demo.
A live demo for this app is available at https://demodx.terminalwire.com.
Watch the video walk-through of Demo DX on YouTube.
The source code for this project is available for study in this repo. You may clone it to your workstation using the following command.
$ git clone git@github.com:terminalwire/demodx.gitThen install the dependencies:
$ bundle installAnd run the server:
$ bin/rails sThen open the webpage at http://localhost:3000.
You may run the bin/demodx CLI app against the development server by running:
$ bin/demodxThe source code for this application will teach you Thor, Terminalwire, and how to build a better onboarding developer experience.
Terminalwire streams the command-line from your Rails server to a thin-client. The source for the command-line app is in the ./app/terminal folder.
The ./app/terminal/main_terminal.rb file is the entry point for the terminal app. You'll see that it's mounted in the ./config/routes.rb file.
# Has root commands like `demodx open` and delegages additional
# commands to sub-commands.
class MainTerminal < ApplicationTerminal
desc "open", "Open website"
def open
browser.launch root_url
end
desc "auth", "Login to Terminalwire"
subcommand "auth", AuthorizationCommands
desc "keys", "Manage API Keys"
subcommand "keys", ApiKeyCommands
endHere's what a typical sub-command looks like:
class MainTerminal::ApiKeyCommands < ApplicationTerminal
before_command :require_user
desc "list", "List API keys"
map ls: :list
def list
api_keys = current_user.api_keys
if api_keys.empty?
puts "No API keys. Run `#{self.class.basename} keys create` to create one."
else
puts "ID\tName"
current_user.api_keys.each do |api_key|
puts [api_key.id, api_key.name].join("\t")
end
end
end
desc "create", "Create an API key"
option :name, aliases: "-n", desc: "Name of the API key"
def create
name = options.fetch(:name, ApiKey.generate_name)
api_key = current_user.api_keys.create!(name:)
puts api_key.token
end
# ... more code ...
endThe ./app/terminal/application_terminal.rb file has baseline code that's used by all terminal apps, including methods that set the current user, authentication, etc. It's analogous to the ApplicationController in Rails.
You'll notice this file extends the Thor class and includes the Terminalwire::Terminal module. This is what enables streaming for a Thor command-line app from the server to the client.
The MainTerminal is mounted in the ./config/routes.rb file. The URL of this route is the endpoint for Terminalwire clients and licenses.
# Mount a Terminal into a Rails app.
match "/terminal",
to: Terminalwire::Rails::Thor.new(MainTerminal),
via: [:get, :connect]The command-line app that users install on their workstations looks like ./bin/demodx. You'll notice it has the same URL that's configured in the Rails routes file, which points to your local development server.
You may need to change the URL of the client if you run your development server on a different URL.
#!/usr/bin/env terminalwire-exec
url: "http://localhost:3000/terminal"
# This is the contents of a Terminalwire thin-client binary,
# which is pointing at a development server. Changing the url
# can point it to a different environment, including production.git