Ladysign

Working with Rails

Feb26

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Difficulty:
In my previous post, I blogged about installing Ruby.
Ruby is the programming language. Rails is a collection of Ruby scripts.
Now let’s install Rails. – (Damn this is so easy!)

Just type in the command line (don’t worry it can take a while):

 gem install rails --include-dependencies

This will auto install Rails with some documentation.
Now let’s start to create a Rails workfolder.

I want it something like this:
testProject
-app
-config
-db
-doc
-lib
-log
-public
-script
-test
-temp
-vendor
..README
..RakeFile

 rails testProject

Done!

To install sqlite3 (database) for Ruby, just type:

 gem install sqlite3-ruby --version 1.2.3

Creating a sqlite database is easy as well:

 rake db:create:all
 ruby script\generate scaffold user first_name:string last_name:string address:text
 rake db:migrate

Now prefill this database with values:

ruby script\console
lee = User.create(:first_name => 'lee', :last_name => 'boonstra', :address => 'Holland')

Do you want a more graphical tool, to view your database or run your queries? Use SQLiteManager.

To install gems for debugging ruby code (in for example Aptana):

 gem install ruby-debug-ide

To install gems for Mongrel HTTP server:

 gem install mongrel

Do you understand now, why developers love Ruby? It’s so handy and easy.
And I know more fun! Let’s create a Ruby webserver! (Again via the command line).

ruby script/server

Your webserver will be start, by default on port 3000.
Do you want a default port? Let’s say 8000?

ruby script/server -p 8000

Now go head! Let’s run your server: http://localhost:3000