Introduction

This page describes how to build a Ruby on Rails (nicknamed 'Rails') site in your CSE home directory.

Ingredients

• An account on the CSE development web server, cheshire.
• (Optional) A MySQL account.

Procedure

1. Login to the CSE development web server:

   
   % ssh cheshire
   
   

2. Change directory to your public_html directory:

   
   % cd public_html
   
   

3. Create a new Rails application. I've arbitrarily titled it RoR_Blog. This step installs most of your application's Ruby on Rails web application framework files into this directory.

   
   ~/public_html% rails new RoR_Blog
   
   

4. Symlink your Rails application's public directory to the name by which you'll refer to the application on the web:

   
   ~/public_html% ln -s RoR_Blog/public foo
   
   

5. Test. You should see the beginnings of a Ruby on Rails application:

   
   http://www-student.cse.buffalo.edu/~userid/foo
   
   

6. Create this web application's database. This will create your development and test SQLite3 databases inside the db/ folder:

   
   ~/public_html% cd RoR_Blog
   RoR_Blog% rake db:create
   
   

7. Create a Controller and a View:

   
   RoR_Blog% rails generate controller home index
         create  app/controllers/home_controller.rb
          route  get "home/index"
         invoke  erb
         create    app/views/home
         create    app/views/home/index.html.erb
         invoke  test_unit
         create    test/functional/home_controller_test.rb
         invoke  helper
         create    app/helpers/home_helper.rb
         invoke    test_unit
         create      test/unit/helpers/home_helper_test.rb
         invoke  assets
         invoke    coffee
         create      app/assets/javascripts/home.js.coffee
         invoke    scss
         create      app/assets/stylesheets/home.css.scss
   
   

8. Figure out how to get Apache and Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) configured to serve RoR apps in per-user public_html directories.
9. AllowOverride Options is on in user home directories, so configure RailsBaseURI/RackBaseURI in .htaccess files? Disable MultiViews.

References

1. http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
2. http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Apache.html