Sinatra Boilerplate

app.rb

require 'rubygems'; require 'bundler'; Bundler.require
require 'ruby-debug'
require "sinatra/reloader" if development?
require "dbi"

connection = DBI.connect('DBI:Mysql:app_name:localhost', 'root', '')

Gemfile

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'sinatra'
gem 'sinatra-contrib'
gem 'debugger',         :require => false
gem 'mysql'
gem 'dbd-mysql'
gem 'dbi'

I'm not a huge fan of DBI, but it serves the purpose of giving direct access to the database (with prepared statements). The only halfway decent docs are at: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/ruby/ruby_database_access.htm