ruby on rails

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Rails Note #5: Dynamic Layouts

Nov 13th

Posted by rupert in ruby on rails

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Wow.. everyday.. Ruby on Rails seems to amuse me.. I just figured how to seperate layouts just by having different files in the layouts/ which corresponds to a controller. If a layout file “home (home.html.erb)” exists and there is home_controller, then the home_controller would use that layout instead of application.html.erb.

Now.. I haven’t validated this concept by book and would do so soon..

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Fig 1

Another way is specifying a filter…

1. In application.rb, specify a method that displays the ‘admin’ layout if the user is admin.

    def load_layout
      if admin?
        self.class.layout('admin')
      end
    end

2. home_controller

class HomeController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :load_layout
end

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Fig 2. admin.html.erb now exists in layouts/

Reference:
http://railscasts.com/episodes/125-dynamic-layouts

Rails Note #4: Deploying a Rails Application in a Subdirectory

Nov 7th

Posted by rupert in ruby on rails

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There are many ways to deploy RoR applications. I have googled all over the place and so far the easiest setup that I could find that would suit my needs (existing Apache2 + ColdFusion + TileCache) would be to use

1. Apache PROXY
2. Mongrel

CentOS Installation Instructions

1. Make sure Apache has mod_proxy

 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 --enable-so --enable-rewrite --with-mpm=prefork --enable-proxy --enable-proxy-connect --enable-proxy-ftp --enable-proxy-httpd --enable-proxy-ajp --enable-proxy-balancer --enable-cgi

1. Apache Proxy

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName test
    ProxyRequests Off 
        <Proxy *>
            Order deny,allow
            Allow from all
        </Proxy>
    ProxyPass /localdumplings http://localhost:3000/localdumplings
    ProxyPassReverse /localdumplings http://localhost:3000/localdumplings
    #ProxyPass /localdumplings/ http://localhost:3000/
    #ProxyPassReverse /localdumplings/ http://localhost:3000/
</VirtualHost>

2. Starting mongrel on a subdir
mongrel_rails start –prefix=/localdumplings

Debian Installation Instructions

1. Install libapache2-mod-proxy-html is easier…

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-proxy-html

2. Enable modules to load in apache2

sudo a2enmod proxy
sudo a2enmod proxy_balancer
sudo a2enmod proxy_http
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 stop
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

3. Add the application in /etc/apache2/mods-available/proxy.conf

<IfModule mod_proxy.c>
        #turning ProxyRequests on and allowing proxying from all may allow
        #spammers to use your proxy to send email.
 
        ProxyRequests Off 
 
        <Proxy *>
                AddDefaultCharset off 
                Order deny,allow
                Allow from all
                #Allow from .example.com
        </Proxy>
 
        # Enable/disable the handling of HTTP/1.1 "Via:" headers.
        # ("Full" adds the server version; "Block" removes all outgoing Via: headers)
        # Set to one of: Off | On | Full | Block
        ProxyPass /localdumplings http://localhost:3000/localdumplings
        ProxyPassReverse /localdumplings http://localhost:3000/localdumplings
 
        ProxyVia On
</IfModule>

Starting a mongrel_rails on boot
Slicehost ( http://articles.slicehost.com/2007/9/21/debian-etch-apache-vhosts-rails-and-mongrels ) has a very good article regarding this.

mongrel_rails start -d -e production -p 8001 -P log/mongrel8001.pid -l log/mongrel.log
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Rails Note #3: Installing Footnotes for RAILS

Nov 5th

Posted by rupert in ruby on rails

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1. Install GIT from http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/

2. http://josevalim.blogspot.com/2008/05/footnotes-v30.html – Jose Valim is now maintaining footnotes

3. How to install?

cd myapp/vendor/plugins
git clone git://github.com/drnic/rails-footnotes.git footnotes
rm -rf footnotes/.git

In summary, you are better off installing the plugin from GIT instead of SVN if you are using rails 2.1.x or edge ( at the time this post was written)

UPDATE

If you are receiving 500 Internal Server Error when having errors on your views then please read below..

If you are running on Rails 2.1.x, you should use Footnotes v3.2.2:

    cd myapp
    git clone git://github.com/drnic/rails-footnotes.git vendor/plugins/footnotes
    cd vendor/plugins/footnotes
    git checkout v3.2.2
    rm -rf ./.git

If you are running on Rails 2.0.x or Rails 1.x, you should use Footnotes v3.0:

    cd myapp
    git clone git://github.com/drnic/rails-footnotes.git vendor/plugins/footnotes
    cd vendor/plugins/footnotes
    git checkout v3.0
    rm -rf ./.git

Remember that in Rails 1.x, after filters appear first than before filters in the Filters tab.

Rails Note #2: Links

Nov 2nd

Posted by rupert in ruby

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Ruby References

Ruby Quick Reference
http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html

Rails References

Downloadable Rails API with Javascript http://www.railsbrain.com/ (Preferred)

Official Rails API http://api.rubyonrails.org/

GotAPI
http://www.gotapi.com/html

Naming Conventions

RubyOnRails Naming Conventions from ITSignals
http://itsignals.cascadia.com.au/?p=7

RubyOnRails.org TipSheetForBeginners
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/TipSheetForBeginners

Tutorials

AkitaOnRails: Rails 2.0 First Full Tutorial
http://www.akitaonrails.com/2007/12/12/rolling-with-rails-2-0-the-first-full-tutorial

Blogs

AkitaOnRails
http://www.akitaonrails.com

Books

The Ruby Way
http://rubyhacker.com/

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Rails Note #1: Getting my feet wet in Ruby On Rails

Nov 2nd

Posted by rupert in ruby

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1. Just installed Ruby and Rails on my MacOSX Leopard. The current version of rails is 1.2.6. I wanted to upgrade using gem update –system but it seems like taking forever.. So I did a manual install of ruby, rubygems then rails..

2. The tutorial that I followed was from http://hivelogic.com/articles/2008/02/ruby-rails-leopard

Installation Summary

2.1 ruby

wget http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.6-p286.tar.gz
tar -zxvf ruby-1.8.6-p286.tar.gz
./configure
make
make install

2.2 rubygems

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/45905/rubygems-1.3.1.tgz
tar -zxvf rubygems-1.3.1.tgz
ruby setup.rb

2.3 rails

gem install -V rails

2.4 other gems

gem install rubygems-update
gem install mongrel
gem install capistrano
gem install postgres
gem install builder

3. Browsed the first few pages of the hilarious http://www.poignantguide.net/ruby

4. Went for a book. Found Simply Rails 2.0 on Boox24x7 and Safari. Added that to my shelf and read chapters 1 – 5 on my first night.

5. Was able to setup database configuration in config/database.yml using Postgres. I have yet to study how oracle works.

6. rake db:migrate is a convenient way of building your database schema without using SQL. Simply Rails 2.0:Chapter 5:Generating a Model introduced inserting records using script/console

7. URL Helpers for Story Resource
stories_path /stories
new_story_path /stories/new
story_path(@story) /stories/1
edit_story_path(@story) /stories/1/edit

Remember to define the route in config/routes.rb
map.resources :users, :categories

8. Naming Conventions
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Variables – lowercase letters and words separated by underscores.
i.e name, country_of_origin

DB Table and Column names should follow convention is always pluralised.
i.e users

Classes and Modules – no underscores and each word is capitalized
i.e User, UserCategories

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