Integrating Rails with other technologies

Hi there

Can anyone here give me examples/experiences of integrating Rails with other technologies?

For instance, if I want to create nice graphs, I really like JFreeChart, which is a Java app. The best way I could imagine doing this would be to have the Java charting component (or whatever app) something like this:

(In the following omiitting http://www.domain.com) 1) User requests /reports/name 2) Goes to the show method on the reports controller 3) Ruby posts to the java web service, which returns a URL to the graph 4) This URL is returned to the web client

Again, suggestions/experiences welcome.

Thanks

Marcos

I believe JFreeChart exposes a nice Java API for creating charts and graphs and such. If you really want to use it in your Rails app, the cleanest way to do that (in my opinion) is to use JRuby as your interpreter. This allows you to mix-and-match Java and Ruby code in your application. Your Ruby controllers and models can access the Java API that JFreeChart provides, rather than having to run JFC separately and access it as a web service.

Switching to JRuby isn't exactly trivial, but neither is it all that hard if you're familiar with Java and Ruby. You can check it out here: http://jruby.codehaus.org

Hope that's helpful.

-Bill