Exercise 1 / Environment setup

• There are no points for these exercises.
• Be sure to have everything running before next week, as there is no (official) support!

Summary

1. Make local development environment with a database from rails.cs.helsinki.fi
2. Make almost that same to rails.cs.helsinki.fi so that username.rails.cs.helsinki.fi shows your application running at $HOME/rails
3. You don't need to install any Gems to your (department) workstation OR rails.cs.helsinki.fi
4. Everything that runs at rails.cs.helsinki.fi is in "production" so all commands needs to have RAILS_ENV=production environment variable set + database config is read under "production"

Environment

Developing Rails requires your own, local, environment and preferably some more stable area to test out your application and to present it to others.

Local

To develop Rails you need local development environment. All workstations at department have been pre-configured. If you want to use your own environment (recommended), see notes in this document and or google "windows ruby on rails".

Production / Staging

You can use your own server in your closet or use rails.cs.helsinki.fi

rails.cs.helsinki.fi

For this course we have rails.cs.helsinki.fi virtual server. It's accessible only the CS Depts network. Use ssh-tunnels or such if you need to access it from outside.

• Whole Rails stack is already configured there.
• Server runs MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.
• username.rails.cs.helsinki.fi launches application from /home/username/rails.
• NOTE: it takes about 10 minutes after logging in to the server that Apache is also aware of that virtual host

Notes about CS depts workstations

(Currently) you need to have these environment variables set for Rails related commands:

export RUBYLIB=$RUBYLIB:/opt/rubygems-1.3.5/lib
export GEM_HOME=/opt/rubygems-1.3.5/gems
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/rubygems-1.3.5/bin:/opt/rubygems-1.3.5/gems/bin (UPDATED)
	

Notes about environment setup

Some notes for your closet or general interest.

Ruby

Ruby interpreter is usually provided as system package. Currently it's safe bet to use MRI.

Any version above 1.8.6 patchlevel > 100 should be good. Ruby 1.9. or jRuby should also work.

RubyGems

Package management for Ruby. Latest RubyGems is always needed.

Depends on two environment settings: $RUBYLIB and $GEM_HOME. If you wish to install RubyGems in other directory than default then you need to specify these variables.

• $RUBYLIB needs to have rubygems.rb
  • export RUBYLIB=$RUBYLIB:/opt/rubygems-1.3.5/lib
• $GEM_HOME sets the path for all gem installation
  • export GEM_HOME=/opt/rubygems-1.3.5/gems
• $PATH needs to have "gem" executable and all gem binaries, such as "rails" or "rake"
  • export PATH=$PATH:/opt/rubygems-1.3.5/bin:/opt/rubygems-1.3.5/gems/bin

Gems

Install with: gem install name-of-the-gem

Required and suggested gems:

• rdoc
• rake
• rails (with dependencies)
• mongrel
• wirble for colors in IRB
• rspec rSpec testing
• rspec-rails rSpec for Rails

Database connection adapters:

• sqlite3 for SQLite (sqlite3-ruby for non-native implementation)
• pg for PostgreSQL (postgres-pr for non-native implementation)
• mysql

Cucumber testing

• term-ansicolor
• treetop
• diff-lcs
• nokogiri
• builder

Database

Select a database that you are familiar with. I would recommend PostgreSQL.

Database on rails.cs.helsinki.fi

After logging, wait 1-3minutes, after that there should be mysql/postgres-password.txt in your home directory.

Postgres

Automatically generated database is named after your username.

MySQL

Automatically generated database is named after your username.

Database on db.cs.helsinki.fi

It is possible to run database on alkokrunni, but please use rails.cs.helsinki.fi. These instructions are just for situations where you need to test somethings / primary service is down for some reason.

On which port does the instance port?

Run /usr/local/sbin/userport <service> to get port number for your account and service, e.g. /usr/local/sbin/userport postgres

Postgres

• Postgres runs from postgres/ -directory in your $HOME
• Setup postgres with command: wanna-postgres and give any password for superuser.
• Edit $HOME/postgres/var/postgresql.conf to have listen_addresses = '*' instead of 'localhost'
• Edit $HOME/postgres/var/pg_hba.conf to have host all all 0.0.0.0/0 md5 to allow IPV4 connections from all hosts (inside cs-dept).
• Start with start-postgres, stop with stop-postgres
• Try out with telnet from any other CS computer / network: telnet db <your userport>
• Use psql to create user account

MySQL

MySQL runs from $HOME/mysql/ and configuration is at$HOME/.my.cnf

Do not start MySQL with start-mysql, as it has networking disabled by default!

• Edit $HOME/.my.cnf to include:

  	[mysqld]
  	...
  	port=<userport for mysql>
  	bind-address=128.214.9.149
  

  where that IP address is the IP of db.cs.helsinki.fi.
• Start MySQL with mysqld_safe, after startup suspend with ctrl+z and resume execution in background with bg. If it wont start error messages are at $HOME/mysql/var/alkokrunni.err
• ..or start with mysqld_safe &
• kill mysqld is the easiest way to stop MySQL.
• Try out with telnet from any other CS computer / network: telnet db <userport>
• Create user account and database for your application with MySQL console: mysql -u root -p

  	create user 'username' identified by 'password';
  	create database nameofthedatabase;
  	
  	grant all on nameofthedatabase.* to 'username'@'%';
  

Oracle

Using Oracle with Rails is a bit hard, so let's not use it :)

Rails, finally we meet.

After setup we can finally actually do something.

Local environment

• With default rails -generator is configured to use SQLite
• Create rails-application with: rails -d postgresql <application_name>
• Change database configuration details in config/database.yml

  	development:
  	  adapter: mysql/postgresql
  	  encoding: utf8
  	  reconnect: false
  	  database: <nameofthedatabase or username at rails.cs.helsinki.fi>
  	  pool: 5
  	  username: <username>
  	  password: <password>
  	  host: <rails.cs.helsinki.fi or db>
  	  port: <userport, or remove whole line to use default>
  

• Test if everything works by running rake db:version, that should exit without errors. If database hasn't been created yet (Postgres on DB?) then you can run rake db:create or create it manually. You might also need to run rake db:migrate.
• Test that the Rails console works: script/console
• Test that server works: script/server
• Point your browser to http://localhost:3000

Local editor / IDE

Unlike Java, Rails is typically developed with (advanced) text-editor.

Requirements

• Directory listing with files always visible
• Syntax highlighting

Some editors to choose from

• Textmate (OS X, commercial)
• gEdit
  • Enable "File browser pane" -plugin, activate with F9
• E Text Editor (windows, commercial)
• Vim + rails.vim
• Emacs + emacs-rails
• Aptana RadRails (built on top of Eclipse)
• JetBrains RubyMine

Production / staging environment at rails.cs.helsinki.fi

Server is configured so that username.rails.cs.helsinki.fi will start Rails application of that user.

Setup for any Rails application at rails.cs.helsinki.fi:

• Put application in $HOME/rails and ensure correct file permissions:
  • a+x $HOME, Apache needs to go through your home dir
  • a+x $HOME/rails, ..and your rails application
  • a+x $HOME/rails/config, ..and your config file
  • a+x $HOME/rails/config/environment.rb, ..and needs to execute this to load the stack
  • a+x $HOME/rails/public, ..if you want to serve static files, note that 404.html etc are handled through mod_rails, so u+r is okay. These are not needed if you don't serve static files.
  • a+x $HOME/rails/public/images, ..same for images
  • a+x $HOME/rails/public/javascripts, ..same for every directory
  • -R a+r $HOME/rails/public/*, ..for files that are not served through mod_rails
• Restart application server by modifying $HOME/rails/tmp/restart.txt
• Note: application will start with 'production' environment (for future reference).

Test this setup with test application:

Test application

So now the full stack should be ready.

Any local environment:

• Grab test application here: http://github.com/matti/stacktest just use public clone URL to clone it with Git.
• run rake db:migrate to see that SQLite3 works
• run rake spec to see that rSpec works (9 examples, 0 failures).
• run rake cucumber to see that Cucumber integration tests are working. (1 scenario, 5 steps)
• run script/server and open http://localhost:3000

rails.cs.helsinki.fi:

• Grab test application here: http://github.com/matti/stacktest just use public clone URL to clone it with Git.
• give correct permissions (from above)
• run RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate to see that SQLite3 works (and to create database in production environment)
• run rake spec to see that rSpec works (9 examples, 0 failures).
• run rake cucumber to see that Cucumber integration tests are working. (1 scenario, 5 steps)
• open http://username.rails.cs.helsinki.fi to verify that everything works