The rails app I have allows users to manage holiday homes. Each property has it's own
"website/homepage" within my app and a user can tweak the content, it works well,
quite pleased so far. Typical rails approach to the resources so the URLs to a particular property look like this for the "homepage" of a particular property.
localhost:3000/properties/1/
then
localhost:3000/properties/1/full_details
localhost:3000/properties/1/price_list
etc
Requirement is to map a domain name e.g. www.chalet-yeti.com and have it resolve (rewrite?) to localhost:3000/properties/1/
like so also...
www.chalet-yeti.com/full_details -> localhost:3000/properties/1/full_details
The next user adds a property and I register a new name on their behalf and I'd like to do this of course..
www.apartment-marie.com -> localhost:3000/properties/2/
Is this possible/advisable/doable in the same rails app? So far solutions have ranged from "why would you do that" to variations on "use mod_proxy / mod_rewrite / virtual_host config". In case it matters the app runs under apache and passenger on my server.
I don't want to pre-empt an answer but most people so far seem to point to apache configuration and most say what I'm attempting is not impossible / inadvisable. Really hope someone could at least point me in the right direction as I've been head scratching all morning. Out of my comfort zone here and I'm hoping I can launch my app and haven't spent six weeks building a white elephant! Unless I can do this URL thing, it's dead!
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1512-how-to-do-basecamp-style-subdomains-in-rails
This is what you want. Don't mess with apache for that. It doesn't scale to hundreds of domains and it's prone to breakage.
Within Rails, you should think of the requests coming just to a URI, without a host name section. That is, instead of localhost:3000/properties/1/full_details you need to think of /properties/1/full_details. The localhost:3000 part is just to get the request to Mongrel during the development process.
So what you really want is to take the request as it is received by the HTTPd (Apache, in your case) and extract some information to construct the request which is given to Rails.
mod_rewrite, which is an Apache module, is the sane way to do this.
You need to ensure that the same virtual host which runs your Rails application accepts requests for all the domain names you're using.
Then you can use mod_rewrite to do something like this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?chalet-yeti\.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /properties/1/$1 [L]
This will take every request to the host chalet-yeti.com (or www.chalet-yeti.com) and hand them to Rails as "/properties/1/$1" (where the $1 is any additional path, like full_details).
You'll need a block like that for each of your domains, but that's just two lines in your Apache configuration. Unless you're doing hundreds of domains, it should be tolerable, right?
Related
I have a URL link like,
http://domain.com/abs/def/city and,
i want to display it as http://city.domain.com/ABC/def
using .htaccess.
Can any one help me by providing .ht access rules.
I want to write .htaccess rules for each city name in URL act as sub domain name.
Also i want it to be dynamic as there are different cities are available in site.
i am using below code in .htaccess file, but not working properly.
RewriteRule ^index.php/(.)/(.)/([^/]+)$ http://$3.domain/$1/$2/$3 [R=301,L]
is there any way to get my requirement using or by modifying my above code or by some other .htaccess code.
Sorry, but what you ask is not possible. This is a typical missunderstanding about url rewriting:
Url rewriting rewrites (manipulates) incoming requests on the server side before processing them. It is not possible to alter outgoing content such that contained urls are changed by this means.
There are solutions for that though:
apaches proxy module can "map" one url into the scope of some other url
there are also modules for automatic post processing of generated html markup
more exotic or creative solutions exist, it depends on your situation in the end...
But usually the easiest is to change the application (typically just its central configuration) such that it contains final urls (pointing to the subdomain in your case). Then you can indeed use the rewriting module to "re-map" those to the previous scope when future incoming requests refer to them (they got clicked).
Ok, second step getting additional info from your comments:
Just to get this clear: you understand that it is not possible to change the link you send out by means of rewriting, but you want to change the url shown in the browser after the user has clicked on some city link? That is something different to what you wrote before, that actually is possible. Great.
If the rewriting works as you want it to (you see the desired url in the browsers address bar), then we can go on. The error message indicates a name resolution problem, that has nothing to do with rewriting. Most likely the domain "cambridge.192.168.2.107" cannot be resolved, which is actually not surprising. You cannot mix ip addresses and names, it is either or.
Also I see that you are using internal, non-routable addresses. So you also are responsible for the name resolution yourself, since no public DNS server can guess what you are setting up internally. Did you do that?
I suggest these steps:
stop using an ip addres for this, use a domain name.
since you are working internally, take care that that domain name is actually resolved to your local systems ip address. How you do this depends on your setup and system, obviously. Most likely you need some entry in the file /etc/hosts or similar.
you need to take care that also those "subdomain names" get resolved to the same address. This is not trivial, again it depends on the setting and system you locally use.
if that name resolution works, then you should see a request in your http servers access log file. Then and only then it makes sense to go on...
Let's suppose I develop a website, let's suppose it has a domain of foo.bar.
Let's suppose further that I have a user called lorem and a user called ipsum. I would like to create an URL of lorem.foo.bar for lorem and a URL of ipsum.foo.bar for ipsum. What are the possible technologies with which I can achieve that? Can you guys give any example in any technology where this is achieved?
Thanks so much.
Depending on your needs I find this approach to be the most straightforward.
In my experience the best way to do what you are trying to do is through Wildcard domains which is configured at your DNS server. In your example *.foo.bar would be the wildcard for your foo.bar domain. Typically these are setup on A records but can be setup on MX records and the like. The only real requirement here is that your DNS server supports wildcard domains.
As far as the Webserver goes, you will need to employ some sort of URL Rewriting technique so that lorem.foo.bar displays the lorem page and so on. There are several techniques to ReWrite URLs. On Apache you can configure VirtualHosts or use mod_rewrite. On IIS there are, again, several methods using either ISAPI filters or you can use URL Routes in ASP.NET MVC to do the rewriting.
Here are some relevant examples:
Creating Wildcard Sub Domain Using Apache VirtualHost
URL rewriting in .NET 4?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840687
http://www.isapirewrite.com/docs/
-Edit per comment
In your example of *.foo.bar you will only ever setup a single wildcard domain on your DNS server. Once that is done you shouldn't ever have to do it again unless you add different wild cards.
As far as Apache goes you should be able to do something like this (I haven't used Apache in a long time so this might be slightly inaccurate)
<VirtualHost 0.0.0.0>
DocumentRoot /www/[directory sub domains are served out of]
ServerName www.foo.bar
ServerAlias *.foo.bar
</VirtualHost>
Again this should be a one time configuration or as you add more wildcards. From here your PHP (or whatever language you are using) would need to handle the actual processing of what content it should display based on the given subdomain.
--edit 2 for second comment
So a wildcard domain allows for pretty much any value. In the above case *.foo.bar would allow for lorem.foo.bar, ipsum.foo.bar, someguy.foo.bar, and so on without requiring you to add additional entries to your DNS server or add additional VirtualHost entries. So using the VirtualHost configuration above lets say the DocumentRoot was /www/subdomains. When navigating to lorem.foo.bar or ipsum.foo.bar both requests get served out of the /www/subdomains folder so the code in there would need to grab the name of the subdomain (lorem or ipsum in this case) and then act on those values by querying the database or whatever other business processes you have in place. Attempting to create a single directory , DNS entry, and/or VirtualHost entry for this process is a mistake because it will become an absolute management nightmare. In the example above you only ever have to worry about 1 DNS entry, 1 VirtualHost entry, and one directory worth images, web pages, PHP scripts, etc.
I have over 90 urls set out in the following format:
http://www.mysite.com/folder1/folder2/page.html
Each of these URLs will be printed on paper for a user to input into their address bar. The problem at the moment is they are too long and therefore I need make these URLs as short as possible.
However, what would be the best method for doing so?
Would sub folders be the best thing here, such as "keyword.mysite.com"?
I don't want to use a url shortening service as they still need to be related to my domain name. Additional domain names forwarding on to the pages are also out of the question due to the quantity of urls.
Richard
Without knowing what technology you are working with (apache/php, asp.net, JSP, etc) all I can suggest is investigating Url Rewriting. Here is a codeproject example of a rewriter for ASP.Net.
There's a handful of mechanisms that come to mind quickly. One is to host your own url-shortening service for your own domain: http://docs.example.com/xsdf and so forth. Writing one for your own users shouldn't be too much work, especially since you could even write a quick script to submit all the URLs for shortening and replace them all without ever making a pretty interface for a human.
If you want something even cheaper, but more work on the part of your server admins, you could use the standard 'rewriting' services in web servers:
Apache mod_rewrite guide
RewriteRule ^/xsdf$ folder1/folder2/page.html [R]
RewriteRule ^/qwer$ folder2/folder3/page.html [R]
RewriteRule ^/polz$ folder7/folder6/page.html [R]
nginx HttpRewriteModule.
rewrite ^/xsdf$ folder1/folder2/page.html redirect;
rewrite ^/qwer$ folder2/folder3/page.html redirect;
rewrite ^/polz$ folder7/folder6/page.html redirect;
Updating these rewrite rules involves editing the server config files, or dropping new ones in place. The other mechanism would be outside the range of the web server itself, so it might be easier or harder for long-term maintenance depending upon which your team would rather work with in the future.
This is kind of weird but I'd like to serve multiple websites on the same domain. If possible, we want to avoid subdomains to keep urls simple for our users - no need for them to know it's two separate apps. This is purely for keeping the code bases separate. Any ideas?
For example:
Rails App 1 (Refinery CMS) serves:
http://example.com/
http://example.com/about
http://example.com/pricing
Rails App 2 (our real App) serves:
http://example.com/account
http://example.com/store
http://example.com/listings
We use ruby 1.9.2, ruby on rails, refinery cms, apache and passenger.
If you're using Passenger, check out the Deploying to a sub URI portion of the manual - it's quite simple to set up an app on a sub-URI. You may need to set config.action_controller.relative_url_root in your app configuration, as well.
Edit: I misread the question; not one app per URI, but one app serving some (but not all) endpoints. This is actually moderately easy to do with some basic rewrites, as well.
Deploy your Rails app to, let's say, /railsapp (but without setting relative_url_root). Now, in .htaccess:
RewriteRule ^account/(.*)$ railsapp/account/$1 [L]
This will internally remap /account/* to /railsapp/account/*, so as long as you set up a rewrite per path your Rails app handles, it should work fine.
Subdomains make it easier (thus why most sites have shop.example.com), but you could probably use rewrite rules with name based virtual host routing. How exactly to do that I'm not sure. More of a Apache rewrite question for SuperUser.
A word of warning if you are using SSL you might have issues arise.
You could set it up to first hit one app where you expect most URLs would work and if it 404s you could instruct it to try the other app next, though this will be slower than routing per route but it will work without having to hardcode a route for every page that is created on say, Refinery CMS.
Currently I'm also working on a same kind of CMS. In my case also I need multiple sub domains, like
www.test1.mydomain.com
www.test2.mydomain.com
www.test3.mydomain.com
www.test4.mydomain.com
here is what I did
in rails 3 (if you are on rails3) you can get the sub domain by using request object. (If you are on rails 2.x you can use sub domain_fu plugin)
In my case I have used a before filter to get the sub domain, after that I load the site according to the sub domain
For development use the following public domain "lvh.me"
http://tbaggery.com/2010/03/04/smack-a-ho-st.html
this was very useful for me http://railscasts.com/episodes/221-subdomains-in-rails-3
let users have their domains forwarded to your subdomain (with masking)
ex : www.clientdomain.com --> http://client.mydomain.com
hope this helps
cheers
sameera
I have a rails app that is accessible through multiple URLs, I was wondering what is the best way to rewrite the URL to use the main domain name, abc.com.
I have a bunch of other domain names like
1kjsdf.info
2lksjdfs.info
3sldkjfds.info
... in total 50 of these kinds of domains.
They all end in info if that makes it easier. I used lighttpd as my webserver, is there a way to set things up so that when the user goes to 1kjsdf.info\profile, the url is rewritten as adc.com\profile?
You should probably do this in lighttpd, not Rails.
http://redmine.lighttpd.net/wiki/lighttpd/Docs:ModRewrite
It will be much faster to service these requests in the HTTP server before letting it get to Rails.