heipei's weblog » Rails

Rails 1.1 / lighttpd-1.4.11 / fastcgi fuckup

Jojo — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 18:12:23 +0000

some people, like me, tend to be a little slower. so if you run into the same problems after updating to rails 1.1 and your old 1.0 rails app dont work with lighttpd anymore (but instead quit with this error:)
2006-08-04 19:59:41: (mod_fastcgi.c.1022) execve failed for: public/dispatch.fcgi No such file or directory 2006-08-04 19:59:41: (mod_fastcgi.c.1048) the fastcgi-backend public/dispatch.fcgi failed to start: 2006-08-04 19:59:41: (mod_fastcgi.c.1052) child exited with status 2 public/dispatch.fcgi 2006-08-04 19:59:41: (mod_fastcgi.c.1055) if you try do run PHP as FastCGI backend make sure you use the FastCGI enabled version. [...]
you have to do what is being told in this bugreport and change the line in config/lighttpd.conf from
"bin-path" => "public/dispatch.fcgi",
to:
"bin-path" => CWD + "/public/dispatch.fcgi",

also this tip about the she-bang line in rails applications proved to be very useful.
Update:
Ive looked a little further, and ive come to the conclusion that when developing/deploying rails apps on multiple systems (like Mac OS X and Gentoo Linux in my case) its best to use rails with the –ruby option when generating a new app. So whenever you build your new rails app do it like this (or even use an alias):
rails --ruby="/usr/bin/env ruby" projectname
this way your apps work on most systems (as long as env installed which seems to be pretty standard) without modifiying any files like the dispatch.fcgi

Rails: First Steps

Jojo — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 13:23:37 +0000

I thought i’d report back here to tell you how much progress i made (with RoR). Well, to be honest, not that much. But as always I learned some other useful things in the progress. Anywho, as you can see in the photo i created a little rails application which takes a search string and returns the image results from flickr and yahoo image search. Flo inspired me to do this, and i was planning on adding other search engines as well (Google Images, MSN Image Search). The good thing about flickr is that there is a ruby gem called ‘flickr’ which does everything one could need, albeit reaaally slow (takes 3-5 sec. per image, somethings wrong there). The same guy also created a yahoo-search library, but for some reason didnt include the url for the thumbnails cached at yahoo, which is why i had to implement it (easy though). Having looked at the flickr, the yahoo and the google api for search request i can say that i cant stop padding the shoulder of the flickr-guys. Not only is their whole service really great but the api is as well.
Now, i cant say that developing it has been much fun so far. Sure, rails is cool when you do what its supposed to do. Like create a form which sends something and using the magic that is ajax re-renders a part of your webpage. Cool thing, and compared to writing it yourself (like in the current german it magazine c’t) it saves you a lot of time. But then you reach a point where you ask ‘how can one form call multiple methods which update multiple regions in turn’ or ‘i dont get this whole render :foo principle, why can there only be one render command?’ and finally ‘why do the flickr results take so f***ing long to render?’
[tags]ruby, rails, flickr, yahoo, search, engine, web, development[/tags]

Riding the Rails Day 1

Jojo — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 17:16:23 +0000

So, i have made the incredibly wise decision to start learning Ruby on Rails while im home for a week. Wise because my Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails book is in my bookshelf in Aachen … don’t ask.
What can i say so far? Wow! There are a lot of hypes, and i am always careful about those kinda people which want to propagate an image of the ultimate solution, the cure to every problem there is. Let me start by saying: No, Ruby and the Rails framework are not perfect nor do they fit every problem. But when it comes to database-driven web development they are certainly one of the easiest things to use. I dont know what the future will bring, and although O’Reilly’s Ruby book sales already overtook the Python books, there is no saying what cool new things the future might bring.
Having said this, rails is something everyone should give a try. So far i only developed web applications (just small scripts, a guestbook, stuff like that) with Perl or PHP. In retrospect i still love Perl, but for the web applications it sucked imho. PHP was okay, but i dont think i have to eloborate on certain PHP shortcomings here. Rails has the great advantage on being built ontop of Ruby, a very clean, simple and easy object-oriented programming language. Now Ruby has been around some time, and is a full-blown complete language, you can use it outside any web environment without a problem.
Rails is a framework (get used to that term and make sure you know what it means ;) which does a lot of those tedious tasks for you. It creates a directory structure, provides its own webserver for development, handles connection to your database, simplifies stuff like AJAX or authentication.
Its my first day, and i probably just sratched the cool things, but im already very impressed. Stay tuned.
[tags]ruby, rails, ajax, web, development[/tags]

Fun Stuff with Ruby on Rails/JScript

Jojo — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 23:28:46 +0000

Fun stuff you find out when trying to get into Ruby on Rails. Since the prototype and effects library come with Rails it is no surprise that one stumbles over then at some point (when doing some AJAX stuff for example). Now, i know that there are some cool things out there, but i have never even used Javascript or been very tempted to do so. Well, until now ;). Check out the links below, they do something with the header of the weblog (so, this is only cool as long as this article is on top or when you have opened the article page).

Toggle visibility (Use this when one of the effects has hidden the header)
The following only make sense when the header is visible ;)
Shake it baby!
Fade away!
Fold it!
Shrink it!
This make sense when the header is invisible
Blind Down!
Appear!

It seems that the Effects are courtesy of script.aculo.us, a website dedicated to those effects in RoR/AJAX Environments, which i have visited many times before, but never used their stuff. I can only guess how much cool things lie ahead ;)

Focus!

Jojo — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 21:26:26 +0000

Kennt ihr das auch? Man will was cooles neues ausprobieren, wofuer man dann auch noch was Zeit und Ruhe mitbringen muss weil es sonst zu chaotisch wird. In der gleichen Zeit gibts allerdings so Dinge die man unbedingt machen muss, und die Prioritaet haben. Mich nervts. Jap. Wuerde gerne was mit Ruby on Rails rumspielen, bisher fand ich alles was ich darueber gehoert und davon gesehen hab mehr als ansprechend. Aber nein: Da liegen noch ein Haufen Blaetter LA die darauf warten angekreutzt und beschrieben zu werden. Und dann noch sowas wie Uebungen fuer Programmierung. Liebe Leute im LuFGi, Ruby ist auch eine Objektorientierte und Plattform-unabhaengige Sprache. Man muss sie nicht mal muehsam wie Java compilen. Stichwort zwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe totschlagen. Wie waers? Naja, bald ist Congress, und immer wenn mich der Nerv-Wurm wieder aergern will denk ich dadran. A man’s gotta dream too ;)