First of all I wanted to put my Rails application into a Maven like directory structure so I created /src/main/rails and put the app in there,  then I knocked up a pretty standard POM for a WAR file.  Next up I wanted to Warble the project so I first up I installed the gem.

pdodds:(svn)trunk[trunk:4184]/src/main/rails$ sudo gem install warbler
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Successfully installed warbler-0.9.11
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for warbler-0.9.11...
Installing RDoc documentation for warbler-0.9.11...
pdodds:(svn)trunk[trunk:4184]/src/main/rails$

Then I pluginize the Warble so that it will be available in my project using warble pluginize.

Next up I wanted to get my Maven pom sorted out – the quickest way I could find to get Warble integrated was through the jruby-rake-plugin. Adding the following plugin to my pom.xml ensures that the gems that I need are installed by the jruby plugin and then warble can be called in the compile phase.

<plugin>
	<groupId>org.jruby.plugins</groupId>
	<artifactId>jruby-rake-plugin</artifactId>
	<version>1.1.4</version>
	<executions>
		<execution>
			<id>install-gems</id>
			<phase>process-resources</phase>
				<goals>
					<goal>install-gems</goal>
				</goals>
				<configuration>
					<gems>warbler,rails</gems>
				</configuration>
		</execution>
		<execution>
				<id>build-war</id>
				<phase>compile</phase>
				<goals>
					<goal>rake</goal>
				</goals>
				<configuration>
					<launchDirectory>${basedir}/src/main/rails
					</launchDirectory>
			    	        <args>war:clean war</args>
				</configuration>
	           </execution>
	</executions>
</plugin>

In the first instance of the execution of the jruby plugin we pull down and install the gems that we are going to use, in the second we actually call the Warble goals in the project to create the WAR file.

In order to quickly integrate this process with the standard WAR building in Maven we need to configure the Maven WAR plugin, you could also change the Warble output but in the end I found this way worked when I wanted to use the Jetty plugin.

<plugin>
	<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
	<artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
	<configuration>
		<webappDirectory>${basedir}/src/main/rails/tmp</webappDirectory>
        </configuration>
</plugin>

While this is pretty brief hopefully it helps others get going and I’m very open to alternate or better ways to achieve the same goal.

The really exciting thing here is the number of players (Morph, Bungee, Heroku, RightScale) since the more the minds converge the more we see the benefits broaden.  At Exist we have been using Morph as a platform for our clients,  it allows us to immediately deploy client sites and then collaborate in a kinda UAT environment which is both easy and quick.  This kind of Infrastructure-on-demand is really a huge benefit – the virtual nature plays so easily in the hands of a collaboration based development company.

What is also important is it fits with out Web 2.0 tooling – as a company we actually choose the environment with the client (it can be anything from BaseCamp or JIRA and our dev teams are up on lots of tools).  The approach is always agile and that usually means a number of environments – Suddenly we are switching up from lots of servers to leveraging the cloud where it is a real blessing.  Real-time development without the hassle of deployment and administration,  giving our sys-admins the chance to work on strategic plans rather than operational needs.

With Morph getting ready to IPO in the Philippines it will be an exciting time to Rails developers looking to push products to market faster than ever.

Some of the nice components I’ve seen included the ability to sum calculated values from arrays where the method is accessing the ActiveRecord fields on the same object.

def sum_invoices
 invoices.to_a.sum(&:invoice_total)
end

Also I have been working with HAML after being introduced to it by one of the team and while it does take me back a little to all those Java templating languages and I now see how useful it is in pushing people toward using CSS.

Other nice little features I have been picking up on include using ruby in fixtures which includes being able to create large number amounts of test data.  As I get more into it the rewarding part the pace of my development appears to be picking up :)

Now at Exist I have been given the chance to look across more technologies again and so it is back to Ruby.   A lot has changed with a huge number of advances in Behaviour Driven Development with Rails 2.0 coming out.  I have to admit there is a lot to pick up again,  and I’m taking time to catch up with it all again.  Though as I start to enter the Ruby world it is nice to see a lot of really nice tools out there to make the work of creating rich solutions easier and easier.  Lately for me it has been working with newgem and rspec,  to start to allow some definition around a component layer for a pet project.

Also I got a chance to hang out with the growing Ruby on Rails scene in Manila which was fun – if you are out here for a while its worth catching up with them.   I’m sure in the next few months I’ll be seeing more and more of Ruby and Rails, and probably a bit of Merb and ActiveResource too.

There are many times when I need to put together an idea really quickly and lately I have been trying to use Ruby on Rails more,  in the past couple of months I’ve been trying to make that more of a thing.

Lately I needed to mock up a few screens for basic data entry and I decided to put something together using rails.  It was an easy start with a few migrations (Rails 2.0 style) to get a schema in place – then I considered a UI.  Originally I thought about scaffold, but I was never a big fan of generating lots of code that I would probably leave lying around.  I wanted something that would give me a shell of functionality (in this case to allow some basic CRUD operations) but not litter the application with code that I would probably want to remove later.  Enter ActiveScaffold.

It only took a couple of hours to get a  a five controllers in place to allow me to manage most of the data,  was it bullet-proof ? err.. no – but then again it was functional and step in the right direction.  Take a look at the demos,  they are worth a look, and when you get a chance have a look throwing it in to see what it can do :)