I am new to ruby on rails deployment. I have created my first simple ruby on rails application, but I am struggling to properly get it onto my server.
In my research, I learned about the various ways to deploy a ror app to my own server, and it seems that using capistrano would be the way to do it. However, it is not clear to me how to use capistrano to launch my app.
What are the steps that I need to take in order to launch my app? Do I need to use git, I prefer not to.. I don't want to use Heroku.
It just seems that deploying the application should be really easy and I am struggling with it. If I am using the non-optimal tools let me know.
thanks
Capistrano is primarily used to deploy apps, not to launch them. Capistrano is of course capable of launching Rails apps, but how to do that depends on how your app is set up.
You should do some research on using nginx (HTTP server) and Unicorn (Rack server) together with Capistrano. It might take some time setting everything up, but once in working condition, they’ll make deploying your app close to enjoyable.
Regarding actually deploying your app: Heroku is not required in order to use Git, but if you really don’t want to use any kind of versions system (though I highly recommend that you do), this blog post might help you on your way: http://www.maxkpage.com/blog/capistrano-rails-deploy-without-svn-or-git/
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I'm a little confused with how deployment of an application works.
I've been looking up tutorials and numerous times it is suggested that it goes live with DigitalOcean, Heroku or something similar, but some are monthly payment services (albeit not a large amount).
I resell hosting to my clients when I build websites for them so I manage everything on my side. My question is: is there a way to deploy a Rails app to my own web hosting space rather than having to use a third-party service? Have I missed something in the documentation?
I'm certain that my hosting can support everything that's needed. If anyone could explain how or why not I'd really appreciate it :-)
You can set up the stack on your own server without problems. When you are using apache or nginx, the easiest might be to use passenger for serving your rails application.
You just need to make sure you have the right ruby version and bundler installed. Services like DO are just simpler to work with as they already do all the needed server setup and most of the configuration for you.
I was wondering if there was around a hosting as those that have existed for years for PHP that would give the opportunity to publish many Ruby and Rails applications and not as Heroku that forces a single application for dyno.
In classical hosting PHP I can create a folder, upload some files in php and navigate them through links.
You can something like that on some Web hosting?
For small projects, Heroku is really the best deal. Their free tier does everything you'd need for something that's occasionally used and doesn't have a lot of scaling issues. You are restricted to one application per "dyno", per account.
For anything more demanding it's not hard to set up a hosting environment on a VPS provider. Although it takes some additional knowledge, you'll be able to set up and configure a web server using a tool like Passenger and manage your own instances. For $10/mo. you can have a very capable server instance that will handle way more than a $7/mo. dyno can manage. Even the $5/mo. server from a provider like Digital Ocean is a fantastic deal.
PHP's fire and forget method of hosting is convenient, but it's actually a lot more work in the long haul compared to an efficient workflow based around Rails and Passenger.
For example, using Capistrano and a version control system like Git you can make changes, test locally, package up into a commit and deploy on your server within minutes. It's basically effortless once you get it working.
For small production projects, I use webfaction, it's easier to push to production than to configure a complete VPS as it's more like a managed hosting (with all the tools and documentation you need for rails) .
I use mina for deployment and Git for version control.
To complete #Tadman answer you can check OpenShift if you want a more Heroku like alternative.
When I started using Rails I was also tempted to compare and seek for a 'php-hosting' like solution. But it's just a different approach.
To answer your question more precisely, you don't drop files in a folder and navigate with links in a classic rails project. You have to understand the concept of MVC, routing ...
I suggest that you give the rails-tutorial a try, it is a good starting point for understanding the whole rails ecosystem.
You can try Ruby hosting on Jelastic PaaS with automated deployment to containers and scaling, as well as pay-per-use pricing model that makes it not so pricy.
There are pre-configured Apache and NGINX containers for running Ruby application, supported different Ruby versions, built-in Ruby on Rails framework, Passenger, Puma, Unicorn, Bundler dependency manager etc.
When deploying a Ruby application, only a single context (ROOT) can be used. However, you can switch between three deployment types: deployment, production and test.
More details are described here https://jelastic.com/blog/ruby-paas-hosting/
You can start with a free trial and test how it suits your project before investing any budget. This Ruby PaaS is available on different local service providers https://jelastic.cloud/
I would like to ask you a question about deploying a rails application onto a physical server.
Briefly, our dinosaur client doesn't want to store anything on the cloud hence he wants us to deploy everything onto his servers instead of heroku.
What should be the most efficient way to solve this problem? Won't he be able to reach the source code of our application?
That would be great if you can help me,
Thanks!
You might think on the variant when you keep only production database (and assets if client want) on the client's server and deploy your code to Heroku or whatever else.
I am wondering how to integrate node.js on a rails app (for learning purpose).
Based on Michael Hartl tutorial (http://railstutorial.org/) I realized a basic twitter clone with rails and want to get user microposts in real-time without the use of comet or juggernaut. (the application is hosted on heroku)
For the moment, I only see example with node.js frameworks (http://howtonode.org/grasshopper-shoutbox) but nothing merged with a ruby on rails app.
I would be very thankful if someone knows a good tutorial or give me some points to start in order to accomplish this.
Thanks!
As Shripad said, I'd consider trying to build your app with Node by itself. Geddy will feel familiar (getting started anyway) if you have experience with Rails. Note: I do not have experience on a real world app with Geddy, but it is the best Rails-like framework I've seen so far. For persistence you can use SQLite, PostgreSQL or CouchDB, just like you would with Rails. I thought about how to communicate between a Rails app and Node without any intermediary. In our work project we're using Redis as an intermediary between Rails and Node. Rails publishes messages to Redis, Node pulls messages from Redis. I could not find a good way or example projects to avoid the middle communication layer on a personal project, so I went with the same setup. The good news is Node Redis modules are written and once you get everything installed, it is easy to test out pushing messages back and forth.
If you are looking at creating real-time apps then go with node.js (high concurrency) alone. You really cannot integrate node.js into a rails app. You can however have a node server setup on another port with an api and websockets configured and then have your rails app communicate with that server. It is PITA to do that kind of setup. You rather build the entire web app in node itself. However, if you want anything rails specific that does not use juggernaut then i would suggest http://www.pusherapp.com.
Its extremely easy to setup server push using Pusher.
It already did. Not really NodeJs but a framework built on top if it. Yada, yada, yada... check this out: https://github.com/1602/express-on-railway
**Run node along side your rails server**
If you want to intergrate your Rails app with Node you could use the node-rails gem
Node Rails will enable you to run a Node server along side your Rails application and have the two share authentication NodeRails assumes you are using Devise for your authentication. Node-Rails uses [redis gem][2] , so you will need to have that installed.
Learn more about using npm packages on Rails.
I've been playing around with a rails app and showing the customer the updates by deploying it on heroku. Now the customer wants it set up on their on server...as a live site.
Heroku made deploying rails app so simple that I can not wrap my head around starting from scratch on a server.
To the experienced rails developers, what all is required to do this? My app uses postgresql and the server is a linux server. The customer claims that they have installed rails on the server.
Do I just have to install postgresql...create the DB...run migrations and voila? or is there other stuff involved as well. Up till now I was working with development section of database.yml...now it will pick up production?
Please give some pointers and/or links that explain the process.
I think capistrano web page has a decent how-to tutorial on where to start from.
Well, think about this: what does a rails app need?
Ruby
Rails (the version you used for your app!)
Ruby gems you use
Rails plugins you use
A database with proper login/password access
If you use the RAILS_ENV environment variable, and set it to production, you won't have to worry about it for the next steps, otherwise REMEMBER TO DO THIS FOR THE PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT!
You can use rake db:schema:load to set up the database, and then.. Well, make sure it loads at startup automatically, make sure you have whatever preloaded data you need, make sure it's accessible from the outside, or from wherever it needs to be accessed.
I don't know if there is anything else you need for the rails app -- but of course, Capistrano is a good idea, to help you maintain the app :)
You probably need to decide which server software you're going to use first, because that's not something that Heroku give you a decision about. Anyway, it's easy because Phusion Passenger is the default choice in the Rails world now. Passenger is easy to set up—it has probably the best command-line setup program I've ever seen—and the documentation is excellent.
Slicehost have a whole series of articles that cover setting up the various bits you need for various flavours of Linux. They really are excellent:
http://articles.slicehost.com/search?q=rails
You'll also need to learn how to use Capistrano, which is what most people use for deploying Rails apps.
Is there a reason why you can't use Heroku as your production environment?
Edit:
If they're running a php webserver the chances are they already have a functioning apache server. If this is the case you should look in to installing passenger and setting up a new database.
At this point you can either copy up your application yourself, run your rake tasks to get everything setup and then sit back and relax, or you can spend the time to learn how to use capistrano so you can repeatably deploy your application.
I suggest the latter... capistrano really isn't that tricky and assuming your application set up is relatively sane the defaults should get you 90% of the way there.