I;m a developer looking to make an app similar to chat roulette. I'm pretty comfortable with Ruby on Rails as my platform and would like to program it in that.
The downside is I have no idea about how to do anything using webcams.
Is there a plugin or gem for rails that integrates webcams easily?
Some quick browsing brought me to abobes site...but I haven't used it before, and though I dont mind learning new things, I'd like to get this out quickly so I'd rather stick to what I know.
What you do you use for webcams?
You would have to use a third-party plug-in to interface the webcam with the site. Rails takes care of things on the back-end (finding and connecting users) but you would need to use Flash or something similar to connect the web page with the camera.
This question is pretty old, but we've been able to use headshot gem in one of our apps.
https://github.com/diwadm/headshot
Related
I want to build an app that use in the backend Ruby on Rails. However my problem comes in the lack of information i found on it. My goals is not just to create a website but an application that interacts with it, like my android facebook app when pressing menu I get button like logout and so on.
I am wondering if their exists tutorial on how to build an application but using rails or should i scrap my entire website and do it in php. I am looking for guide and tutorial. Thanks in advance
You can build an app on any platform and make it interact with your Rails-based server using HTTP requests (like AJAX).
You can send information back and forth using JSON or XML; you would probably need to make a new set of actions for the app to use.
There is no reason to use PHP. ever.
A little unclear from your original question, but if you are looking to create a mobile app using Ruby (and a structure similar to Ruby on Rails) then you may be interested in Rhomobile. It is a cross-platform mobile application framework that uses Ruby for its backend code, and follows a structure similar to (older) Ruby on Rails versions.
From what I understand of your problem, you want to use the robustness of Ruby to develop a native app (not just another app that mirrors a website).
The best thing I know of for this is RubyMotion. The bummer is the cost ($200). But then you would get to accomplish your task.
I need to build a web service, for a mobile game, to manage the states of multiplayer games. I need a database and an RESTful API to access it. I'm very familiar with Ruby On Rails and was thinking of using that since I can throw together the DB and API pretty quickly. However, since RoR is a framework for building web pages and I'm not actually building any web pages, it naturally seems like the wrong technology to use even though it would work. As such, I'm considering using Ruby on Sinatra, but I've never used it before and I'll have to kill some time learning it. For you Ruby gurus, is there an advantage to using Sinatra or a disadvantage to using RoR for what I'm trying to accomplish?
Thanks so much in advance for your wisdom!
You know Rails, you don't know Sinatra. Personally I prefer the latter for things like building APIs, but there's nothing stopping you from doing it in Rails, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it either. Unless you want to see this as a learning opportunity for getting into Sinatra, I'd say stick with Rails. Here's some links that might be useful btw:
Building APIs With Rails
Building a Platform API on Rails
It probably depends on your API. If you need more than just a bunch of routes then you will have to come up with your own solutions (authentication, ...).
If all you need is some RESTfulness without the added weight, Sinatra is great. All you need to know is what happens in what route and you're fine. See the Sinatra Readme which has all the information to get started.
Originally I planned to use Juggernaut, however, it is not compatible with Rails 3. And new Juggernaut 2 seems to be completely independent from Rails, which is not what I want. Then I found cramp, it looks quite neat, but is still under development. So I am just wondering which framework should I use? Or is there a better one?
Thanks!
You're right that the new Juggernaut is de-coupled from Rails, but that doesn't mean you can't use the two together. Juggernaut comes with a Ruby library. Using Juggernaut solves the long-lived connection problem that Toby was talking about.
Any questions about Juggernaut, ping me a line (I'm the creator).
I have looked at the options for this stuff quite extensively and real-time chat is a bit against the grain of Rails. If you really want to stay inside Rails, then Cramp is probably the best option. I recommend you have a look at this article on Websockets and Rails as well: http://www.igvita.com/2009/12/22/ruby-websockets-tcp-for-the-browser/
Using EventMachine to handle the communication means you are that even though you will still be outside Rails, you are at least in Ruby and can share models and libraries.
I have a Async Rails build on GitHub:
https://github.com/tobyhede/AsyncRails
Which is largely based on:
https://github.com/igrigorik/async-rails
Well - you could also try Socky: https://github.com/socky/socky-server-ruby
It's ruby-based, and uses WebSocket as base with flash fallback to support most devices. Also it's complete ruby-based so give it a try if you want :)
I'm looking for a Rails plugin that eases the development of a "friends" system or social networking system for the latest versions of Ruby on Rails.
Before anyone says it...I know, I should probably create it myself, from scratch. And I am fully capable of this (I think). I'm just looking for a good plugin that can a.) make life a bit easier for me and b.) give me some ideas for reference.
I tried to make my own authentication system, and did what I thought was okay, but then I switched to restful_authentication and realized how poor my system was in comparison.
Thanks in advance...
U might wanna try Community Engine
from the website
CommunityEngine is a free, open-source
social network plugin for Ruby on
Rails applications. Drop it into your
new or existing application, and
you’ll instantly have all the features
of a basic community site.
it uses engines, easy to change layouts or do modifications
real world example - http://www.weebabystuff.com/
another option I know is Insoshi as Chuck posted
updated : look at this blogpost http://jimneath.org/2008/04/25/building-a-social-network-site-in-rails/
-- Ed :) --
You could look into http://lovdbyless.com/
This is a free open-source Rails social networking app which should give you plenty of ideas and pointers.
Ronald
You HAVE to see this railscasts video.
try acts_as_network plugin
The only one I know of is Insoshi. I haven't used it myself, but it sounds like that's what you're looking for.
I would recommend using OpenID library for rails to handle authentication.
On top of what others have said, there's also acts_as_network. The bonus of this one is that it's a pure plugin (doesn't require engines). Not having to worry about engines is a huge plus. The downside, of course, is that it's not a full fledged social network. It's just a friending plugin for models.
You might want to checkout the Amistad gem. It looks pretty simple and it supports both Mongoid and Active Record.
For avatars i would use avatar and try will-paginate for pagination. other then that i love can_serach to make it alot easier to search in the database.
You should also look at the other gems by technoweenie. There is alot of great stuff there that can help you
I've just been researching this myself and chosen to go with Bort & CommunityEngine
Bort because I am familiar with it already and it provides all you need in user authentication and basic application functionality. Community Engine because it is an Engines based plugin and some aspects of Engines are being merged into Rails 2.3 so I know what I learn will continue to be useful and because CommunityEngine seems more modular while lovedbyess and Insoshi seem more like complete applications and I suspect it would likely be more work to disentangle the features I want from the ones I don't. However, take that with a huge grain of salt since it is just based on high-level quick browse initial impressions.
If you just want an activity feed then there is the activity streams plugin
I am developing an application in using Ruby on Rails, mostly as an excuse to learn the language.
This is not intended to be a web-based application - and perhaps I have chosen the wrong language, but...
My understanding is, that in order to run an instance of this application on somebody else's computer, they would need to install ruby on rails, and a webserver (or webrick, perhaps), as well as my application code.
I am just curious if there are any other options for distributing my application as a standalone app, or perhaps just a simple way to package up a web browser and ROR together with my app for a simple, one-step install?
I have personally never needed to do this. But, I have ran across this tutorial http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/rails.html that I think will be helpful. The tutorial covers how to actually convert a rails app into a standalone exe file.
Note, Slingshot appears to be a dead project (see comments). I'll leave this answer here for historical purposes and the off-chance that it comes back
Joyent's Slingshot might be a good bet.
Joyent Slingshot allows developers to deploy Rails applications like a standard desktop application, which work online and offline (with synchronization), have drag and drop, and interact with all the other desktop applications.
With Joyent Slingshot:
Create a hybrid Web/desktop application
Synchronize online and offline data
Use the same code for online and offline application(s)
Deploy and update your application easily
Drag into and out of application
Here are some further links to help with your evaluation and/or to help you get started:
Introducing Joyent Slingshot
Basic application walkthrough
Slingshot wiki
The way most people ship ruby programs, including Rails webapps, as a standalone exe is via rubyscript2exe. They describe how to package a Rails application at http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/rails.html. Ruby, Rails, and all the associated libraries will be included in the EXE file.
As others mentioned, Ruby is not necessarily Rails and if you really want an easy way to write a distributable GUI application in Ruby, Shoes is an excellent place to start looking.
Gears on Rails maybe?
You could always consider compiling your Ruby to JVM byte-code (via JRuby) or .NET byte-code (via IronRuby) to distribute to people who have those virtual machines and don't want to install a Ruby runtime.
You might want to check out Shoes for building desktop applications in Ruby. Rails really is tuned for building websites.
You can include Ruby on Rails by freezing it to the version of Rails you want to use in your project. They call this Freezing. The user will not have to install Rails to use your application. You can do this with any library you use in your project. If the project uses a library, just place it under the Vendor folder in your project. Then use a tool similar to what #Josh answered with to package it.
You will need a web server to run the project though. There is no way around this. Ruby on Rails is just like ASP.NET in this regard, in that it is a server side framework. The server runs the code and outputs the HTML to the browser by using the Rails framework.
Unfortunately, you may have picked the wrong framework to do what you want. Instead of Ruby on Rails, you may want to check out Shoes, which is a framework for developing GUI applications using Ruby.
You do not specifically say whether it is supposed to be a GUI application or not. From the other answers, I would guess so.
Therefore, you need to clarify what your goals are. RoR is a specialized framework for web applications. If your goal is to learn RoR, I'd say to get yourself some inexpensive web hosting and make yourself an app. If your goal is to learn Ruby, not necessarily Rails, then Shoes, IronRuby, JRuby, MacRuby and others may be good options to look at.