How do I run ledger-rest?

[duasfl8r]

Hello,

I am a recent user of the ledger-cli app.

While googling for a way to chart my data, I came across your ledger-charts, and ledger-rest repositories.

But how do I use it? I cloned it and I don't really know what to do.

The only thing that came to mind was this:

$ ruby ledger-rest.rb 
Failed to load config file

(I tried copying .ledgerrc to my home folder to no avail).

Thanks!

[profmaad]

Hi,

I have to admit that at the moment, usage is not all that convenient. ^^

To start ledger-charts + ledger-rest, you will need the following gems:

• git
• haml
• rack
• sinatra
• thin (or your choice of webserver, but thin is what I use and test with)

Then start the whole package by running
thin -R both.ru -eproduction --threaded start

This will start thin on 0.0.0.0:3000, running both ledger-rest (/rest) and ledger-charts (/charts).
Just go to localhost:3000/charts

[profmaad]

Alright, apparently I was slightly dimwitted yesterday and forgot most of the necessary steps.
My apologies for that.

Here are all the steps (or so I hope):

• clone ledger-rest someplace
• enter the cloned directory
• create a config file called ledger-rest.yml, containing the following (adapt to your setup, of course):

ledger_bin: "/usr/local/bin/ledger"
ledger_file: "/path/to/your/ledger.ledger"

• go back up a level, into the directory where your ledger-rest directory resides.
• clone ledger-charts and go into the folder
• create a config file called ledger-charts.yml, containing the following (adapt to your setup, of course):

ledger_rest_uri: "/rest"

• start the whole stack via:
  thin -R both.ru -eproduction --threaded start
• open your browser and go to localhost:3000/charts. You will (hopefully) be greeted by ledger-charts in all its bare-bones glory.

Good luck, ask any questions that might remain. :-)

[johannesjh]

Some additional notes:

I found I had to additionally install the escape gem. Like so:

gem install git
gem install haml
gem install rack
gem install sinatra
gem install thin
gem install escape

And I had to place the ledger-rest.yml file into the ledger-charts folder (!) in order to be found by `ledger-rest' because I would otherwise get an error message saying "Failed to load config file". This is the resulting folder layout:

ledger/ledger-rest
  /config.ru
  /ledger-rest.rb
leder/ledger-charts
  /public/
  /views/
  both.ru
  config.ru
  ledger-charts.rb
  ledger-charts.yml
  ledger-rest.yml

And I had to uncomment ledger-rest.rb line 23: set :git_repository, File.dirname(settings.ledger_file) because settings.ledger_file evaluates to nil.

Suggestion for improvement:
I think that ledger-chart should use an automated dependency mechanism instead of error-prone manual copy-this-file-here and checkout-this-repo there instructions. This could e.g. be realized through git submodules or ruby gems... just an idea.