Rails 3.1 - Development Using Mountable Engines

Question

I develop 2 applications for 2 separate clients, and the third for myself. All 3 applications will have an address book, email and user authentication. Finally, I want the applications to be created “modular” so that I can add (or remove) modules as needed.

I watched Mountable Engines Railscast and it seems like what I need, but I still don't understand the following:

• How do you develop each module module (user authentication, email, address book) separately without a common base application?
• How do you design an address book module when user authentication is required, which is a separate module?

I assume that you first develop user authentication and include this in a dummy module module application, but I am confused with the engine namespace.

It might be useful to note that I'm starting from the background of C #, and I'm new to web development.

Answer 1

People have already written plugins for authentication and emailing. For most applications, the only work left for these modules is configuration.

You might want to write an engine to share some settings and share some address book features. In this case, you might consider creating an example application that has as little custom code as possible to clearly define the api address book.