Finally, I found some time to install Ajax Scaffold plugin tonight. I did have to wait an hour while asking the perpetual question, Is rubyforge ever up? Eventually, it was, and installed the plugin I did.

After configuration, Ajax Scaffold immediately copied some files into my project directories, including public/javascript, public/images, and apps/views. Clearly, those directories are off limits to plugins. Rails plugins live inside vendor/plugins. Most disturbing, though, is files within apps/views/ajax_scaffold are nuked at runtime. Fortunately, my changes were checked into Subversion before I restarted Webrick, or that would have sucked indeed.

Ajax Scaffold ships with images, some JavaScripts, and many templates which you can modify or not, depending on your customization needs. There’s a Rails plugin that provides the flexability necessary for Rails extensions that are practically applications themselves: Rails Engines.

That’s not to say that Ajax Scaffold isn’t great. It is. Rather, it seems like an excellent example of a plugin that’s well positioned to be a Rails Engine.

Engines, ftw!