Avo is much more than an admin panel, and you don't need to spend a lot of time understanding that. Built on top of Ruby on Rails, one of the most productive languages and frameworks, it has a modern stack using Tailwind CSS, Turbo and Stimulus JS. Better to leave the Avo overview for a next post.
If you still don't know Avo, you should at least appreciate all the care they took to deliver an interface that, in my opinion, is very good, guaranteeing a better experience for users.
So let's download from GitHub and run locally a system with many of its features.
TL;DR:
- Get a Avo 2 Pro trial license;
- Ruby 3.2 language and the Rails 7.0 framework installed;
- Download the Avo demo from GitHub;
- Configure to access PostgreSQL;
- Change the Gemfile to use the latest Ruby 3.2;
- Enter Avo license
- Install packages and dependencies;
- Build CSS assets;
- Create and initialize the database;
- Start the Rails server;
- Ready, browse to your heart's content;
1. Get a Avo 2 trial license
Avo, in addition to the community version, has other types of licensing. To have broad access to the features, we will use an Avo 2 Pro trial license.
Access the Avo, and click on Sign Up. After completing registration, click on your profile icon and select Subscriptions, then Choose a plan, choose the Pro version and click on Start 30 day trial. The system URL is not required, click Subscribe. Now you will have your key to use the Avo 2 Pro version for 30 days.
2. Ruby 3.2 language and the Rails 7.0 framework installed
You probably installed Ruby with asdf, Rbenv or RVM. Check if you have ruby and rails installed:
$ ruby -v
ruby 3.2.2 (2023-03-30 revision e51014f9c0) +YJIT [x86_64-linux]
$ rails -v
Rails 7.0.8
3. Download the Avo demo from GitHub
Avo 3 is in the final testing phase for release, but in this tutorial we will use the latest stable version of Avo 2 compatible with the repository demo. Download the pre-avo-3 branch to your Ruby on Rails project folder.
$ git clone -b pre-avo-3 https://github.com/avo-hq/main.avodemo.com
Cloning into 'main.avodemo.com'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 2540, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (682/682), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (290/290), done.
remote: Total 2540 (delta 495), reused 503 (delta 388), pack-reused 1858
Receiving objects: 100% (2540/2540), 7.92 MiB | 1.65 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1463/1463), done.
4. Configure to access PostgreSQL
Go to the main.avodemo.com project folder.
$ cd main.avodemo.com
Open the project in your favorite editor or IDE.
$ code .
The Avo 2 demo uses features that are not supported in SQLite3, so we need to configure PostgreSQL username, password and other necessary parameters in the config/database.yml file. Don't forget to configure it for development and test environments, or configure it on default for all environments.
Save Changes.
If you have not yet used PostgreSQL from within a Ruby on Rails application, you will need to install the libpq-dev package, required by the pg gem.
$ sudo apt install libpq-dev
5. Change the Gemfile to use the latest Ruby 3.2
Open the Gemfile and update the file to match the latest version of Ruby 3.2 installed on your machine.
ruby "3.2.2"
Save Changes.
6. Enter Avo license
Edit the config/initializers/avo.rb file
and check if the pro license type is defined and if the key code obtained in step 1 was inserted or passed as an environment variable.
config.license = 'pro'
config.license_key = 'dd8....586b'
In your case, you will put the full key in the file or environment variable.
7. Install packages and dependencies
All commands from here onwards must be executed in the project root directory.
$ bundle install
Using rake 13.0.6
Using concurrent-ruby 1.2.0
Using i18n 1.12.0
(... many packages ...)
8. Build CSS assets
$ rails tailwindcss:build
(...)
Done in 501ms.
9. Create and initialize the database
$ rails db:setup --trace
** Invoke db:setup (first_time)
** Invoke db:create (first_time)
** Invoke db:load_config (first_time)
** Invoke environment (first_time)
** Execute environment
** Execute db:load_config
** Execute db:create
Created database 'avodemo_development'
Created database 'avodemo_test'
** Invoke environment
** Invoke db:schema:load (first_time)
** Invoke db:load_config
** Invoke db:check_protected_environments (first_time)
** Invoke db:load_config
** Execute db:check_protected_environments
** Execute db:schema:load
** Invoke db:seed (first_time)
** Invoke db:load_config
** Execute db:seed
** Invoke db:abort_if_pending_migrations (first_time)
** Invoke db:load_config
** Execute db:abort_if_pending_migrations
** Execute db:setup
Note that the rails db:migrate command will not work. If necessary, drop the database with rails db:drop and run rails db:setup again.
10. Start the Rails server
You are ready to start your Rails server. Note that the Avo 2 demo was configured to use port 3020, rather than the default port 3000.
$ rails server
=> Booting Puma
=> Rails 7.0.4 application starting in development
=> Run `bin/rails server --help` for more startup options
Puma starting in single mode...
* Puma version: 5.6.4 (ruby 3.2.2-p53) ("Birdie's Version")
* Min threads: 5
* Max threads: 5
* Environment: development
* PID: 246413
* Listening on http://127.0.0.1:3020
* Listening on http://[::1]:3020
Use Ctrl-C to stop
11. Ready, browse to your heart's content
If the Avo 2 Pro license key was not entered correctly, you will be informed after authenticating in the system.
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