Rails: How to "publish" a website - ruby-on-rails

So, I am almost done with my website. I created it using ruby on rails on the Cloud9 IDE. Is there a way to publish it? To go on it, a user has to be signed on Cloud9 and then I need to run the code on the terminal...
rails server -b $IP -p $PORT
How would I be able to publish my website? I am very new to rails and I have no idea.

To publish your website you need to host it somewhere.
There are multiple ways to do this. For instance you can use Heroku. They provide PaaS (Platform as a service), which means they will handle the installation of the app for you and the maintenance of the virtual machine it resides (updates and whatnot).
Heroku also gives you a very nice admin view for the status of your app, online log display and some other goodies.
Another alternative would be Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean or Linode (among many others!). They provide IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service). They only give you a virtual machine with your choice of operating system, you will have to manually publish your app and provide manual maintenance of the VM and pretty much anything including the database itself.
Using Heroku would be your best choice for the moment as they are very straightforward with the publishing part. Once you get the grip you can go to the other platforms for customization.

You will also need some deployment tools such as capistrano or mina.
If you're going to host your app in heroku, it's much easier to deploy. As simple as pushing your codes with git.

Related

deploying a rails project to a remote server

is it possible to deploy a rails project to a remote server using FileZilla ? the server is running nginx/1.4.6 (ubuntu)
if no what is the best way to deploy the project if there is already a running version !
To answer your question yes, the code needs to be up, so FTP should do the trick. You might need to restart nginx to pick up the changes, usually touching a restart.txt is enough, but that's particular to your setup.
Is this the best way? Possibly not!
Others suggested capistrano and that would be a good fit for a server you maintain, or go Heroku (or similar) service for a simpler setup.
Deploying a Rails app is a tough job. There is always the easy way (heroku) however shared servers don't deal well with rails. Theoretically you can but usually this shared servers have really outdated ruby and rails versions and are absolutely useless. And you can try to connect via ssh and try to update it but i doubt you will be able to do that. So... If you are a rails developer i can suggest.
1- For small apps run Heroku (easy and free) however cost grows like hell with the app's growth
2- If you're thinking about developing big apps get a dedicated server (you can get cheap ones for 5€/month) and configure it as u would for your computer except when you run rails you run it in production.
3- Trust me... i fought enough Rails and shared servers and i quit... I just gave up

deploy rails choices

After I finished reading Agile Web Development with Rails, I Have developed my own website.
Now I am trying to deploy my project on linux system I rent, but I know nothing about how to deploy rails.Which server should I user? How to connect to mysql database?
As a java developer, I know I can use tomcat as my server which can convert http request to my own object and use jdbc to connect to my mysql database.
Now I want to know what is the main stream environment rails deployed?
I have heard of Lighttpd and FCGI. Can I use them in the product environment?
thanks
Is your linux system a full VPS (you have complete control?) If not, check your hosting company to see what options are available to you. If so, check to see if they have guides for setting up Rails. A lot (Slicehost, Linode, etc.) do.
Failing that... I would recommend either Apache (or Nginx) with Passenger.
https://www.phusionpassenger.com/
It's pretty straight forward.
As for actually deploying, look into Capistrano (or Vlad). These are a little bit more complicated, but they make life so much easier in the long run.

How to install Ruby script on server?

I apologize in advance for the fairly simple question.
I am familiar with PHP, but am trying to install this Ruby script on my server for the first time. It's an open source script that I've forked from github, but unfortunately does not have any instructions. I have Ruby on Rails, and MongoDB installed already.
Does anyone know what the beginner steps are to get started? Should I upload everything via FTP to the public directory, or is there something else to this?
Most Rails projects are much better served by having a proper deployment strategy. Typically this involves making your own repository, easily done by forking that existing application, and cloning that on to your server using git. To make changes in the future, do your work on a development copy, push that into the repository, and pull down the changes on the server.
Unlike PHP where many parts of the application can function independently, Rails applications tend to be far more integrated and uploading it piece by piece is not going to work in the long run.
Rails applications can run stand-alone using the provided rails server tool but this is really only intended for light-duty testing or development work. A more permanent solution is to use something like Passenger to do the hosting for you.
Passenger will take care of launching your application when calls are made to the site you've configured in Apache or nginx, depending on which you end up using. Passenger is popular because it's quite easy to get running.
There are other approaches like unicorn if you're feeling more adventurous.
When you make changes to your Rails application in production mode you will have to create a tmp/restart.txt file in the main application directory to tell your web server to restart the process. This is not a requirement in development mode.
Due to the relative complexity of this process once you include all the various steps, you will probably want to use a deployment automation tool like capistrano.

does RoR develpment need shell access?

let's say that RoR development environment is set up and working
does the developer need shell access to develop the RoR application?
would ftp be good enough?
why? I don't want to give my future developers ssh access to my linux box. Or can I set up their file permission so they can read only their project directory?
UPDATE
the whole idea is to have below running on my VPS linux hosting
code repository
production environment
test environment
maybe development environment
for
few projects
that are looked after by different people
so I want the developers to be able to do their job and only be able to access their project files and maybe only I would be able do to deployment into production from test environment
As Tom mentioned, it makes life a lot easier on Rails developers if they have ssh access to the machine so they can migrate the database, run bundle install, check the logs, or just jump into console.
There are ways to segregate users though, through file/directory permissions, chroot, or but making your linux machine a bunch of virtual machines and giving them their own
You can take a look at how Heroku's client works for possible ideas, since Rails developers are able to deploy, migrate, check logs, and even get into the console without direct shell access. Deployment is all done via git hooks and then their client gives access to particular commands. This is not trivial to set up/get working, though.
Well it does not REQUIRE shell access, but it sure makes it easier.
Without it how can you migrate a db? You would have to manually create controllers, models, etc.
Short answer, you CAN develop without shell access, it is just awkward and more tedious.
This is a common situation - for instance, Network Solutions allows you to do the basic RoR install but only gives ssh access if you step up and pay extra for a VM hosting package. My suggestion is to create the app on a local machine, of course using shell commands, then FTP mirror the files up, then use mysqldump to export the local database. NSI allows you a database console whereby you can then import your database dump file. You will probably have to edit config/database.yml since the host database server is unlikely to be localhost. If the necessary gems aren't present, you will have to plead with your hosting customer service.

How do you deploy your Rails application?

Do you upload your rail application to your host via FTP first?
I'm currently using Passenger and Capistrano. If I do "cap deploy" in my local machine then I think Capistrano should upload my rail application to my host, right?
Someone from my host is saying that I need to run "cap deploy" in server. I think it doesn't make sense.
You should be able to run cap deloy on your local machine and that should get the current version of your software to the server. However, you need to set up first how this is supposed to happen. I for example use Git to manage my code and also use it to get my software on the server. However, you could also use SVN or FTP if you prefer that. If you google for Capistrano together with the Software youbeant to transfer the code with and maybe even your hosting providers name, you probably will find a decent step by step explanation. For me John Numemaker's post on deploying with Capistrano and Git on Dreamhost really helped: http://railstips.org/blog/archives/2008/12/14/deploying-rails-on-dreamhost-with-passenger/
As an alternative you also might want to check out heroku.com. Their smallest offer is free and enough for most projects. The deployment process is so easy a monkey could deploy a Rails app on their platform. I generally can only recommend heroku.

Resources