what is the easiest way to achieve that result? i would like to keep controllers and models the same for all the "applications", which, in fact, are the same. They only appear different (the views, the css, and a parameter of the query that will be sent to the database). I could separate the rails app, but, doing that, i will need to replicate every common change (a bug fix in a model method for example) to all of them. is there a better way?
I think it is rather problem of solving question how to configure virtualHost not rather rails app itself....
It is easy for instance with Passenger and apache, you configure virtualHost's files for appropriate domains and pass on every same home folder of your app to them
In app core you see what is your request url and you know how to act...
Why not just grab the domain from the URL, then use that to determine which stylesheet, etc. to use?
You have a couple of options.
1. Setup virtual hosts on your web server and find a way to keep the public folders seperate(easy in passenger on apache, but cannot speak for anything else). This does not allow for having seperate view files for each subdomain.
2. In addition to or instead of 1, use the code below in your application controller and call it before every request with the theme for that request (i.e. get it from the params in one way or another - I use a database lookup as my sites are defined in the db, but that is not nescessary unless you require it for another reason). Note that the code below will expect the different views in a folder called 'themes/<<theme>>/views' - change this to wherever you want to store it. The good thing about this method is that it uses rails to do the clever stuff and if the view file that you want isn't in the folder specified, then it will look in existing locations i.e. your application. This is useful if you want all of your subdomains to keep the same view files as the app UNLESS you want to change them for that subdomain.
def set_theme(theme) @theme=theme Thread.current[:current_theme]=theme
prepend_view_path([ ::ActionView::ReloadableTemplate::ReloadablePath.new (Rails::public_path + "/themes/#{@theme}/views")]) end
Regards
Gary
Best solution I had seen is posted over here: http://transfs.com/devblog/2009/01/21/hosting-multiple-domains-from-a-single-rails-app/
I was developing recently such application and it works perfectly with Rails 2.3.5
Besides of configuring VirtualHost, everything focuses on extending functionality of routing. So in new initializer you put:
module ActionController module Routing class RouteSet def extract_request_environment(request) env = { :method => request.method } env[:domain] = request.domain if request.domain env[:host] = request.host if request.host env end end class Route alias_method :old_recognition_conditions, :recognition_conditions def recognition_conditions result = old_recognition_conditions result << "conditions[:domain] === env[:domain]" if conditions[:domain] result << "conditions[:host] === env[:host]" if conditions[:host] result end end end end
And at the router itself:
map.connect '', :controller => 'true_cost_calculator', :action => 'new', :conditions=>{ :domain=>'truecostofcredit.com' } map.connect '', :controller => 'another_cost_calculator', :action => 'index', :conditions=>{ :domain=>'anothercost.com' }
Sometimes :host is useful too
Regards
