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How to deploy a Rails application on HostingRails.com



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  This tutorial assumes you are a beginner that has a working Rails app on your local machine that you wish to deploy onto your HostingRails.com account.  It also assuming you have no interest in deploying via SVN/Git & Capistrano at this time:  

Contents:
  1. Receive your welcome email and take note of important info
  2. Log into your cPanel and set up your mySQL database(s)
  3. Create online versions of your environment.rb and database.yml files
  4. Make sure your .htaccess file sends requests to dispatch.fcgi
  5. Login to the command line and generate your Rails app
  6. Upload only key folders and files to your online app
  7. Make your app's public folder the public_html
  8. And that's it, your app is live!  Let's take a sneak peak
  9. Note: Making changes to your app when its in production mode
  10. Note: Answers to common problems

Receive your welcome email and take note of important info
  1. The IP address of your account - xx.xxx.xxx.xxx
  2. Your username and password
  3. The link to your cPANEL - i.e. https://xx.xxx.xxx.xxx:2083

Log into your cPanel and set up your mySQL database(s)
  1. Create your database
  2. Create a user
  3. Assign that user to the database (if you forget this step a database-driven app will fail)
Note that your database name and username will have your HostingRails.com account name as a prefix (e.g jimmy_databasename, jimmy_username, etc...) - this is important for your database.yml file.


Dump your local machine database data into the new database you just created.
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Via phpMyAdmin?  You can click on the phpMyAdmin link at the bottom of the cPanel mySQL page.

or

Via Command line?  Record your database schema in a *.sql file, upload it to your app's db folder, then: 

[~/yourapp]# 
mysql --user=hruser_dbuser --pass=*** hruser_dbname <db/your_schema.sql    
or

Simply do a rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV='production'


Create "online versions" of your environment.rb and database.yml files
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   Though every developer has their own method for keeping track of their local app config vs. online app config - one might recommend simply creating "environment.rb.online" and "database.yml.online" files that you'll use to upload (and then erase the .online part to replace the existing online files, of course.)

Your database.yml(.online) file simply needs to look like this:

production:
  adapter: mysql
  database: [your_hostingrails_username]_[your_database_name]
  username: [your_hostingrails_username]_[your_database_username]
  password: your_password
(Yes you can erase all the other stuff - this is all you need. Never run in development mode online with HostingRails.com or any shared server)

And in your environment.rb(.online) file you'll just need to uncomment the following line to confirm you're in production mode:

ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'production'
(this will probably already be done for you)


Make sure your .htaccess file sends requests to dispatch.fcgi
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Please Note - as of Rails 2.1.0 the .htaccess file no longer exists in the default skeleton.  Run a "Rails _2.0.2_ testapp" and move over the public/.htacess from there



  This one is easy but also critically important.
  In your local Rails application's public/.htaccess file change the 

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]
EXACTLY where it is already in the file, don't change its position, to:   
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
also - very important make sure the 'AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi' is commented out at the top of your .htaccess:
# General Apache options
# AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
And that's it


Note: many people run into problems at this point because they upload their dispatchers from their local box which often has a different Shebang than what is needed. This is bad. To avoid this problem generate your rails app on the server itself, which we'll do next, and leave the dispatch.fcgi file alone.


Login to the command line and generate your Rails app
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     Using your favorite SSH client (for a free one - try PuTTY), connect to your IP and stay at your user root directory (which is /home/username/ ) and:

[~]# rails your_app_name
Let the Ruby on Rails magic happen and you'll then be able to see you online folders - which we'll upload files to next...


Upload only key folders and files to your online app

     OK, your skeleton app should be located now at your root ([~]) - you'll now want to move over the following folders and/or files:
  • whole app folder (yeah, with the controllers, models, helpers, views)
  • public/images
  • public/javascripts
  • public/stylesheets
  • public/.htaccess (with the dispatch.fcgi rewrite)
  • db/migrate (but not schema.rb)
  • config/database.yml(.online, if you did this above, then remove the .online part)
  • config/environment.rb(.online, if you did this above, then remove the .online part)
  • (we'll do routes.rb later, hold on)
  • Also add any libs, scripts, environments, etc...that you might need (you know your app), if you need a specific gem installed that is not already use this tutorial.


Make your app's public folder the public_html
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(so domain.com will point to your app)

     Ok first, if you haven't already done so, in your routes.rb set the root route to the name of your main controller (you will see that all you need to do is uncomment the following line and add in your controller name):

map.connect '', :controller => "your_main_controller_name"
Then upload this routes.rb file into your online config/ folder.

Next, You must delete the index.html in your public/ folder.

Finally, let's create the symlink so the www directory is your Rails app public folder. Get to your root directory and:

[~]# mv ~/public_html ~/public_html_backup
[~]# ln -s ~/yourapp/public ~/public_html
The Sneak Peak
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     So by now hopefully you've set your nameservers to those designated in your welcome email, but if you can't wait for all the routers to find your new address you can take a sneak peak.  The url for your 'Sneak Peek' domain was also sent in your Welcome email and will point at your main app symlinked at public_html. If you need a sneak peek to test a subdmain app, you can always request one from support@hostingrails.com.


Note: Making changes to your app when its in production mode
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     In production mode with FastCGI much of your application data is cached and held in memory. This means that Rails is 'always on' and ready to feed a browser with code - which makes Rails fast. However, if you make any changes to your app (database, controllers, views, models, config, etc...) and don't see your changes right away, you'll need to run via the command line:

[~]# killall -u <your_username> dispatch.fcgi
You'll see that you won't be able to shut down other users' processes (thankfully), but unless you see a "no processes killed" this means your dispatch.fcgi processes were indeed killed and ready to start up again with the new changes incorporated.


Note: Answers to common problems
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Not working?

     Well - there's not much worse than going through a tutorial and having it not work. You're probably either getting an Application Error (Rails) or a 500/404 error (which means Rails didn't even fire up). In the former case, you can make your way to your app's log/production.log and see what's going on - and in the latter you can make your way into your cPANEL error log page and see if that tells you anything.

     However, the most common problems are that people upload their whole public folder (rendering the shebang line problem), they don't have their database settings correct in the database.yml (this would get picked up in the logs), they need a gem or lib installed, the online database data/settings doesn't match their local database (again, picked up in production log), their permissions got messed up somewhere along the way (e.g. make sure your dispatchers are CHMOD 755) or they had a typo somewhere (where again, the logs are helpful!). There are other reasons why deployment can fail, so please feel free to check out this thread or ask a question in the forums. :)
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