deploying rails as a sub-url

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello,

I want to deploy a rails app as a sub-url to an existing site.

So, I'm using ProxyPass in apache to proxy urls for /foo to localhost on port 10000, where mongrel is listening.

Unfortunately, the helper functions in Rails like link_to seem to insist on providing absolute urls (ie. /admin). That will break with this scheme, since the /foo in the URL won't be maintained.

What is recommended for a deployment like this?

Thanks, Mike

2

msoulier wrote:

Hello,

I want to deploy a rails app as a sub-url to an existing site.

So, I'm using ProxyPass in apache to proxy urls for /foo to localhost on port 10000, where mongrel is listening.

Unfortunately, the helper functions in Rails like link_to seem to insist on providing absolute urls (ie. /admin). That will break with this scheme, since the /foo in the URL won't be maintained.

What is recommended for a deployment like this?

Thanks, Mike

You can use --prefix with Mongrel to specify the subdirectory you want to run Rails under. E.g.:

mongrel_rails start -d -p 10000 \        -a 127.0.0.1 \        -e production \        --prefix /foo

3

Cool, that works! I had a partially working solution by updating routing with the prefix, but that broke access to the public directory.

Thanks!

Mike

4

Dan Kelley wrote:

Mike, any chance you could post the relevant code from your httpd.conf file?

I've been stumbling around, trying to figure this out, for a while now, and I've yet to get multiple sites working on one box, without having work done on DNS tables (which is not a possibility in this case).

With a lot of help, I eventually got RoR working for a single site (OSX apache2 final-stage setup hints? - Rails - Ruby-Forum) using ProxyPass.

However, this ProxyPass method seems to be the wrong approach for multiple sites on one box (Multiple virtual host? - Rails - Ruby-Forum) since it demands the changing of DNS tables, which I lack permission to do. [Commercial hosting is not a solution for me.]

What's the problem? In httpd.conf you just need something like this:

ProxyPass /site1 http://localhost:9000/site1 ProxyPassReverse /site1 http://locahost:9000/site1

ProxyPass /site2 http://localhost:9001/site2 ProxyPassReverse /site2 http://locahost:9001/site2

And to launch each Mongrel you need something like (run from inside each app directory):

mongrel_rails start -d -p 9000 \          -a 127.0.0.1 \          -e production \          --prefix /site1 \

mongrel_rails start -d -p 9001 \          -a 127.0.0.1 \          -e production \          --prefix /site2 \

5

Mike, any chance you could post the relevant code from your httpd.conf file?

It's just

ProxyPass /foobar http://127.0.0.1:10000/foobar ProxyPassReverse /foobar http://127.0.0.1:10000/foobar

Unfortunately it's not enough, since proxypass only fixes http headers and not page contents. The link_to function and it's brothers all seem to want to use absolute urls instead of relative ones, a terrible practice. I tried turning off that behaviour in the default html options but it didn't seem to help.

In the end I used the mongrel option suggested and it's working great. Still, I find it sad that Rails suffers from the same broken assumptions about deployment as jakarta-tomcat.

I've been stumbling around, trying to figure this out, for a while now, and I've yet to get multiple sites working on one box, without having work done on DNS tables (which is not a possibility in this case).

With a lot of help, I eventually got RoR working for a single site (OSX apache2 final-stage setup hints? - Rails - Ruby-Forum) using ProxyPass.

However, this ProxyPass method seems to be the wrong approach for multiple sites on one box (Multiple virtual host? - Rails - Ruby-Forum) since it demands the changing of DNS tables, which I lack permission to do. [Commercial hosting is not a solution for me.]

It now works for me with a combination of proxypass, and mongrel's -- prefix option. Should work for you.

Mike