When you use the Akelos setup script to create your application, it creates the entire directory structure for the application. Akelos knows where to find things it needs within this structure, so you don't have to tell it.
Here is a top level view of directory tree created by helper script at the time of application creation. Except for minor changes between releases, every Akelos project will have the same structure, with the same naming conventions. This consistency gives you a tremendous advantage; you can quickly move between Akelos projects without relearning the project's organization.
To understand this directory structure let's use demo application created in installation chapter. This can be created using a simple helper command C:\akelos\> akelos demo.
Now go into demo application root directory as follows:
C:\akelos\> cd demo
C:\akelos\demo> dir
You will find a directory structure as follows:
demo/
/app
/controller
/helpers
/models
/views
/layouts
/config
/lib
/log
/public
/script
/test
/tmp
/vendor
README
Now let's explain the purpose of each directory
app : This organizes your application components. It's got subdirectories that hold the view (views and helpers), controller (controllers), and the back-end business logic (models).
app/controllers: The controllers subdirectory is where Akelos looks to find controller classes. A controller handles a web request from the user.
app/helpers: The helpers subdirectory holds any helper classes used to assist the model, view, and controller classes. This helps to keep the the model, view, and controller code small, focused, and uncluttered.
app/models: The models subdirectory holds the classes that model and wrap the data stored in our application's database. In most frameworks, this part of the application can grow pretty messy, tedious, verbose, and error-prone. Akelos makes it dead simple!
app/view: The views subdirectory holds the display templates to fill in with data from our application, convert to
HTML, and return to the user's browser.
app/view/layouts: Holds the template files for layouts to be used with views. This models the common header/footer method of wrapping views. In your views, define a layout using the <tt>var $layout = 'default';</tt> and create a file named default.tpl. Inside default.tpl, call {content_for_layout} to render the view using this layout.
config: This directory contains the small amount of configuration code that your application will need, including your database configuration and your Akelos routing of incoming web requests (routes.php). You can also tailor the behavior of the three Rails environments for test, development, and deployment with files found in the environments directory.
lib: You'll put libraries here, unless they explicitly belong elsewhere (such as vendor libraries). This is a good place to put your classes or functions that don't fit in a model or are shared across many controllers.
log: Logs go here. You'll find separate logs for each Akelos environment (development.log, test.log, and production.log).
public: Like the public directory for a web server, this directory has web files that don't change, such a s JavaScript files (public/javascripts), graphics (public/images), stylesheets (public/stylesheets), and
HTML files (public).
script: This directory holds scripts to launch and manage the various tools that you'll use with Akelos. For example, there are scripts to generate code (generate) and launch the web server (server).
test: The tests you write and those Akelos creates for you all go here. You'll see a subdirectory for unit tests (unit) and fixtures (fixtures).
tmp: Akelos uses this directory to hold temporary files for intermediate processing.
vendor: Libraries provided by third-party vendors (such as security libraries or database utilities beyond the basic Akelos distribution) go here.
Apart from these directories there will be two files available in demo directory.