Some prerequisites:
I use Rails 2.3.4 at the time this is posted and my gem list shows:

actionmailer (2.3.4)
actionpack (2.3.4)
activerecord (2.3.4)
activeresource (2.3.4)
activesupport (2.3.4)
flickraw (0.7.1)
json (1.1.9)
locale (2.0.4)
locale_rails (2.0.4)
mime-types (1.16)
mysql (2.8.1)
rack (1.0.0)
railroad (0.5.0)
rails (2.3.4)
rake (0.8.7)
thoughtbot-paperclip (2.3.1)

Installation:
To install AS, open a shell and type:
ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/activescaffold/active_scaffold.git
Installs AS and all the necessary stuff
ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/rails/in_place_editing.git
Ooops, in place editing was missing – so let’s install it.
ruby script/plugin install --force git://github.com/lackac/render_component.git -r rails-edge'
Ooops again, render_component was taken out of Rails so subforms wouldn’t work – let’s get around this by installing lackac’s plugin (thanks!)

OK, basically, you are set. What now?
The ActiveScaffold website (www.activescaffold.com) and especially their API docs are your bible. So read them, re-read them and re-re-read them while building stuff with AS – you will need the (rudimentary) tipps included there.
Ok, now let’s start with integrating AS into our app. Let’s say you have a basic application which already has a master layout. Put this tag into the of your layout:

<%= active_scaffold_includes %>

It includes all the magic needed for AS. To continue, you should have a resource we can work on, in this case I created a resource named “customer” to store some customer info in it and work on it with AS:

ruby script/generate resource customer name:string phone:string email:string description:string is_active:boolean

Migrate the data now:

rake db:migrate

Edit your customers_controller.rb in app/controllers and put

active_scaffold :customer do |config|
end

right after

class CustomerController < ApplicationController

to make AS aware that it should take care of our customers. Now open config/routes.rb and add :active_scaffold => true right after the customer resource. When you start your server and call /customers, you now should see AS in action. Congratulations, this was the first part

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How to get it:

sudo gem install railroad json

Then use railroad to create a dot diagram (I go for a model diagram here):

raiload -o doc/mymodels.dot -M

Or create a diagram of your controllers with…

railroad -o doc/mycontrollers.dot -a -C

Then, use dot to create a graphic out of it:

dot -Tjpg -o doc/mymodels.jpg doc/mymodels.dot

You can also use -Tsvg (for vector graphics) or -Tpng etc.

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