SoapBox Simon

The development interface for SoapBox. Can be used specifically for any project that replies on

• PHP
• Laravel
• Vagrant
• Node.js
• Bower
• Grunt

Prerequisites

• Node.js
• VirtualBox
• Vagrant

Getting Started

Install simon globally with NPM

sudo npm install -g soapbox-simon

You now have access to the simon command across your system.

Updating Simon

sudo npm update -g soapbox-simon

Creating a simon.json file

You need to have a simon.json file in your project's root directory before using Simon for development. Here's the sample file with all available options and their defaults:

{
    "hhvm": false,
    "local": false,
    "banner": "SoapBox Simon",
    "ip": "127.0.0.1",
    "domain": "localhost",
    "prompt": {
        "text": "Simon says > ",
        "commands": [
            "..."
        ]
    },
    "vagrant": {
        "dir": "/vagrant"
    }
}

Here's what each of these do

• hhvm: If true, will run all PHP commands (including PHPUnit and Composer) with the HipHop Virtual Machine. Same as using the --super option.

• local: If true, will not ssh into the Vagrant VM before running a command. Note that all Node commands (including NPM, Grunt, and Bower) always run locally.

• prompt: Options for the Prompt class, which powers interactive mode.

• ip: IP address of the Vagrant machine. Should be the same as the IP on config.vm.network in the Vagrantfile.

• domain: Domain name that resolves to the ip.

• vagrant: Configuration hash for Vagrant. If set to false, Simon will not attempt to install a Vagrant VM and will attempt to run all commands locally.

Commands and Options

Once you have your simon.json file, navigate to your project's root directory and run simon help to view the options you have available:

$ simon help

  Usage: simon [options] [command]

  Commands:

    add                    Add a new website for the current project
    artisan                Run the local php artisan command
    bower                  Run the bower command
    composer               Run the composer command
    grunt                  Run grunt command
    help                   Show this help block
    install                Install all vendor dependencies from NPM, Composer, and Bower
    npm                    Run the npm command
    permissions            Fix permissions on the app/storage folder (UNIX only)
    php                    Run the php command
    phpunit                Run the local phpunit command
    refresh                Rollback and reapply migrations, seed the database
    remove                 Remove the website for the current project
    ssh <cmd>              Run the given command on the Vagrant VM
    start                  Initialize the development environment
    update                 Update all vendor dependencies from NPM, Composer, and Bower
    vagrant                Run the vagrant command
    *                      Run a given Grunt task

  Options:

    -h, --help          output usage information
    -V, --version       output the version number
    -i, --interactive   Jump right into interactive mode.
    -l, --local         Run all commands locally instead of on the Vagrant VM.
    -s, --super         Run PHP commands such as PHPUnit and Artisan with HHVM.
    --subdomain [slug]  Specify a subdomain for the "add" and "remove" commands

Setting up a project for the first time

As soon as you have your project directory, navigate to it and run

sudo simon add

Simon will add the IP address of the site (as specified in simon.json) to the hosts file.

If your site requires multiple subdomains, run

sudo simon add --subdomain <subdomain>

Using Simon for SoapBox development

Make sure you have all the above prequisites installed, and that your project has valid Vagrantfile and simon.json files. Whenever you begin your day of development or switch branches on git, run

simon start

This does a few things

1. Installs, provisions, and boots up the Vagrant virtual machine that hosts your website
2. Installs Composer dependencies
3. Performs any outstanding database migrations with artisan
4. Installs NPM development dependencies (for Grunt)
5. Installs Bower front-end dependencies
6. Runs npm start (which is a specified in the project's package.json and is usually the default Grunt task)

And that's all you should need until the current branch changes!

If you're getting permission errors or white screens, running this might fix it.

simon permissions
simon -l permissions

Interactive mode

After running simon start, run simon without any arguments to enter interactive mode. Here you'll be able run some useful SoapBox-related commands in the mini "Simon says" shell.

simon

Interactive mode is optional for day-to-day backend development, but front-end developers will have to keep it running. It's responsible for running the Grunt watch task recompiles the front-end when a file changes.

From interactive mode you can run most of the commands available from simon help

$ simon
Simon says > refresh
> Running php artisan migrate:refresh --seed

...

> Database refreshed and seeded successfully
Simon says >

You can also run interactive mode with the command-line options. For example, running simon -l will ensure that the artisan interactive command always calls php artisan on the host machine.

You can safely exit out of interactive mode at any time by typing stop or exit.

Running commands on the host machine with the --local option

By default, all of Simon's commands (except for most Node.js commands for performance reasons) run on the Vagrant VM. When you use Simon's --local or -l option, all commands will run on your local machine.

For example

simon -l start

will perform the startup process above, except composer and artisan will run locally rather than on the VM.

Copyright © 2014 SoapBox Innovations Inc.