Ruby on Rails for Tablet Computers (Android OS)

Hey guys,

I am building an RoR web app that I would like to have fully contained in a tablet computer.

I would like to run the server on it, and also use it as the client.

Is this possible with any tablet computers out there at the moment? I really am aiming to get it working on the android tablet, but any tablet that allows you to install ruby and run a server would suffice.

any help appreciated!

Lee

I'm not aware of such a beast, but one thing to consider is memory and processing speed. We use Rails because it maximizes our (developer) productivity, and it does so at a cost of requiring a fairly studly server to run the back-end. I haven't tried running RoR on anything less than a 1/2 GB VPS.

Now when I was just starting out in this tech wheeze, I had an off-cast SE/30 running some Mac Web server, and it was pretty darned quick on the local network. A pal of mine had installed Unix on his, and hooked it to a T1, and could saturate the T with upstream traffic from Apache. But that's static service, nothing dynamic. That SE/30, with its 16MHz 68030 processor, 1 whole Megabyte of RAM, and creaky-slow SCSI 1 hard disk could be speedier than the network when the task was sized to it, but try to get it to also run a database server, an application server, etc. at the same time as all those Web requests, and you would have had a sad little putty-colored puddle.

Now you're talking about running the server AND the browser in the same memory- and process-limited environment. I don't think it's realistic to expect this to work well or even at all. I use a beefy Mac laptop to do the same thing for development purposes, but that's orders of magnitude more processing power, available RAM, and storage for data and swap. It's just not even in the same universe. And even that beast can be quite noticeably slower than the same app running from SliceHost over my network connection.

Walter

thanks for your reply.

I think you are right in what you say. It would be too much of a memory hog to do such a thing.

I will have to have a dedicated server for the hosting of the RoR app.

I am building a point of sale system where the interface is html on a tablet pc, so I was digging into my options.

May be best to just access a small linux server over wifi.

are you looking for the full rails stack? Or would a ruby-based MVC stack work for you? Look at http://rhomobile.com/. I have used them in the past, and they do what you want, but its not a full rails stack, more like a ruby-mvc subset.

-igor

yes, the full stack would be required. I am using rails3 btw.

regards,

Lee Farrell

yes, the full stack would be required. I am using rails3 btw.

As opposed to running the server on the handheld, have you looked at writing an app using Mirah? It's very, very ruby-like.

Mirah is a simpler Java, a Java that is fun to work with. Best of all, it is also already fully functional, and is just a simple gem install away:

-- Beyond Ruby: Mirah, Reia, Rite - igvita.com

HTH, Dan

I've not heard of Mirah. Certainly like the idea though.

I have decided to drop the whole rails approach.

I had designed a rails app to act as a full point of sale application. It would be accessed over tablet pc browsers.

I have done some testing today accessing the web app via safari on the ipad and the latency was terrible. So much so, that it renders the product un-usable.

I am going to have to go full android I think. Maybe have some backend to dump the data using some rest API.

Any advice for taking such a route?

Again, if you like writing in Ruby vs Java, do a sample test app with Mirah. Let us all know how it goes.

Thanks, Dan

ok, thanks, I will post here shortly