Dashing is a great, simple, dashboard-ing engine built on Sinatra made by Shopify. After having built a Sinatra application as an internal tool for my work, I was looking forward to integrating our Dashing dashboard to run on the same Rack. This post is to review the solution I found to running Dashing alongside a Sinatra application.

Let’s call the Sinatra application boom-tools and the Dashing app dash from here on out. My goal was to have my dash live in a folder within boom-tools and use the latters Gemfile, config.ru, and so on but hold its own routes, views, etc within it’s own folder. So something like this:

★ boom-tools
  |-- dash
  |    |-- assets
  |    |-- config
  |    |-- config.rb
  |    +-- dashboards
  |    |   +-- science.erb
  |-- app
  |-- views
  |-- public
  |-- config.ru
  |-- boom_tools_app.rb
  +-- Gemfile

Then I would simply map Rack to run each application:

#config.ru
require './boom_tools_app.rb'
map "/" do
  run BoomTools
end

require './dash/config.rb'
map "/dash" do
  run Dash
end

To achieve this, there are a couple of steps:

  • split up boom-tools and dash Sinatra::Application run times so that Rack treats them as separate apps
  • get Dashing to rackup from a non-root directory
  • map each app in config.ru
  • Bonus: change Dashing to run on same web-server (future article)

Modular Sinatra with Sinatra::Base

Both Dashing and the Sinatra Application need to have unique run spaces to make the built-in Sinatra settings correct for each unique app. Unfortunately, Dashing is not a modularized Sinatra application, but inherits from Sinatra::Application rather than Sinatra::Base. There is a work around, however, by modularizing the boom-tools app by wrapping it in the Sinatra::Base class. NOTE: Some Sinatra specific things will need to change or will need registration when in use with sinatra/base. Make sure to look in Sinatra doc for more information. Modular Sinatra documentation

#boom_tools_app.rb
require 'sinatra/base'
class BoomTools < Sinatra::Base
  get '/' do
    erb :index
  end
  get '/fire-extinguisher-manual'
    erb :extinguish
  end
  post '/itsboomtime'
  end
end

Additionally, Dashing uses its own config.ru for Sprockets requirements, Rack settings and other things. I pushed this information into dash/config.rb to be required from the root config.ru and also gave the Dashing application it’s own class.

#dash/config.rb
require 'dashing'

class Dash < Sinatra::Application
end

configure do
  set :auth_token, 'YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN'

  helpers do
    def protected!
     # Put any authentication code you want in here.
     # This method is run before accessing any resource.
    end
  end
end

#This can no longer be done here - this is used by Rack so must be in the root config.ru
#map Sinatra::Application.assets_prefix do
#  run Sinatra::Application.sprockets
#end

Dashing file-path requirement change

At this point, if you rackup, you will likely only be able to see the boom-tools routes. Going to the URL of one of your dashboard /dash/science may result in a blank screen. However, a quick network panel inspection will show a bunch of load failures, indicating that Dashing is not properly loading. Here is the fix, with a little help from the require_all gem to make requiring folders easier:

#dash/config.rb
require 'dashing'
require 'sprockets'
require 'require_all'

class Dash < Sinatra::Application
  settings.root = settings.root + '/dash' #originally was "/Users/acme/boom-tools"
  settings.public_folder = settings.root + '/public'
  settings.views = settings.root + '/dashboards'
end

require_all Dash.settings.root + '/lib'
require_all Dash.settings.root + '/jobs'

configure do
  set :auth_token, 'YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN'
  sprockets_paths = Dash.sprockets.paths
  set :sprockets, Sprockets::Environment.new(root = Dash.settings.root)
  sprockets_paths.each {|i| Dash.sprockets.append_path(i.gsub('boom-tools/','boom-tools/dash/'))}

  helpers do
    def protected!
     # Put any authentication code you want in here.
     # This method is run before accessing any resource.
    end
  end
end

As you can see, Dashing was pointing to Rack’s runtime root (/boom-tools) and could not find the dashboard or any of its requirements. All that is left is wrapping up config.ru.

Map Apps in config.ru

#config.ru
require './boom_tools_app.rb'
map "/" do
  run BoomTools
end

require './dash/config.rb'
map Dash.assets_prefix do
  run Dash.sprockets
end

map "/dash" do
  run Dash
end

And you should now be able to rackup with no issues.