The Crucial Blog - Archive
Creating and Running a Ruby On Rails application in cPanel - Crucial Paradigm
A number of clients have approached us asking how to get their Ruby on Rails application running on cPanel, so we wrote a tutorial to help alleviate some of doubt:
- Login to cPanel.
- Click on the icon for “Ruby on Rails”.
- Check the box for “Load on boot?”
- Fill in the “App Name” box with the application name”.
- Application Path will be automatically filled as public_html/application_name
- Select “production” for the Environment, which should already be selected as the default.
- Click “Create”
After starting the application, you can access it using the URL : http://domainname/app_name/public/
Avoid : http://domainname/app_name/public
Each application will be using a port above 12000(>12000). The application will be automatically assigned a port when we are creating the application from cpanel.
Note : If we are creating the application under public_html directory, the application’s source code and configuration files can be viewed by anyone on the web. So, to avoid this you have two options:
- Create the application in the public_html directory and change config file permission to 600. Especially the database.yml (/home/username/public_html/application_name/config/database.yml) file in which all the mysql access details are specified.
- Create the application in home directory and use the rewrite option.
You can create the application in the home directory (/home/username) and then use the rewrite option in cpanel(Cpanel >> Ruby On Rails >> Create A Rewrite). On the right hand side of each application, click the link “Create Rewrite” and save the required rewrite rule. For example: if you want to redirect the main domain to your rails application port, say http://domainname:12002, Select the main domain in “Domain & URL to be redirected to rails app” section and click save. Similarly, you can redirect a subdomain to the rails application by selecting the corresponding subdomains from the list(Domain & URL to be redirected to rails app). But before that you should create that particular subdomain in cPanel.
Each user can run 4 rails applications at a time.
Simple test application :
========================
- Create the application from cpanel, for exampe: Application name : example
- Generate the test controller, via SSH:
#cd /home/username/public_html/example/
#ruby script/generate controller home
- Create corresponding directory to store views, via SSH:
#cd /home/username/public_html/example/appl/views/
# mkdir home
# vi index.rhtml
<h1>Welcome</h1>
And save index.rhtml file.
#cd ..
#chown -R username:username home
- Start the application
- You can access the application from http://domainname:port/home/
When you access the URL http://domainname:port, the default ruby welcome page will be displayed. If you want to see the application on the main page, set the corresponding route in the configuration file routes.rb.
For example: In the above test application example, to display the welcome page of our home controller, instead of rails welcome page, uncomment and change the following line in routes.rb (home/username/public_html/example/config/routes.rb).
map.root :controller => “welcome”
==> map.root :controller => “home”
Move the default rails welcome index file “/home/username/public_html/example/public/index.html” to another name(index.html.bak) or you can remove the file.
- Now you can access the home page from http://domainname:port
Creating a simple database application :
========================================
- Create the application from cPanel, application name, eg: testdata.
- Create the database. Use db migration to create the database. Create a database user with privileges and assign this user to the database in cPanel.
- Edit /home/username/public_html/testdata/config/database.yml
production:
adapter: mysql
database: username_databasename
username: username_databaseusername
password: *******
host: localhost
- Use scaffolding to generate the controller, models and views.
#ruby script/generate scaffold Test
Rails strongly recommends the following:
- Use ‘id’ as your primary key in a table.
- Name of the model should be the singularization of the name of the database table.
- Use rake db:migrate to migrate the database.
- Start the application from cpanel. You can access the application from http://domainname:port/tests/
- The scaffold generater by default will create some views and controllers. The scaffolded actions and views are: index, list, show, new, create, edit, update, destroy. You can see these simple views in http://domainname:port/tests/. This scaffolding offers skeleton code frameworks from which we can generate the application.
Rails Environments :
- Test : For testing, where we can use sample data.
- Development : For development which will use most of the time when we develop the application. In this environment your application’s code is reloaded on every request.
- Production : Production for the “real deal”, or when the site goes live.
Mongrel :
Cpanel uses Mongrel webserver for rails applications.
Starting mongrel :
- Cpanel >> Ruby On Rails >> application name >> Click “Run”. Or from command line,
# cd <path to application>
#mongrel_rails start -p 12004 -d -e production -P log/mongrel.pid
p –> port
d –> daemon
e –> environment
P –> path to mongrel pid file (default path: /home/username/public_html/application/log/mongrel.pid)
NOTE: Thanks to Anusha for this great article!
Tags: cpanel, ruby-on-railsRelated posts
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Filed under: Uncategorized by — aaron @ 6:28 pm
Gem Error Ruby on Rails cPanel: uninitialized constant Gem::GemRunner (NameError)
Error: uninitialized constant Gem::GemRunner (NameError)
When: Installing Ruby on Rails gem on cPanel
Solution:
1. Open the file
/usr/bin/gem
or
/home/username/ruby/bin/gem
2. Simply add the line to that file
require ‘rubygems/gem_runner’
after
require ‘rubygems’
3. Save and exit
Tags: cpanel, ruby-on-rails, system administrationRelated posts
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Filed under: Uncategorized by — aaron @ 1:34 am