ActivoRicordi Captain’s log

Hi All:

I have recently discover Heroku service for building applications. It is extremely useful and extremely easy to use. It is also based in Git a SCM system which is also revolutionazing the version control systems.

To install Git, we could use this guide located on the progit or also you can see this page which explains how to use textmate with git

We set git configuration:

$ git config --global user.name "Your Name"
$ git config --global user.email youremail@example.com

There is a great Quickstart for using Heroku which I used as a base for this post: http://docs.heroku.com/quickstart

• Sign in in Heroku
• Install Heroku gem:

$ sudo gem install heroku

• Create the local application in your mac: rails myapp
• Access to the rails app: cd myapp
• Install git
• Execute git:  $ git init
• Do git add:  $ git add .
• We access to the following command:

• • Do git first commit: $ git commit -m "new app"

  • We open the application, and we start the local server ruby script/server and access to localserver using http://127.0.0.1:3000
  • As usual, we generate a index or home controller. I generally call them dashboard as it is sexy: $ ruby script/generate controller dashboard index
  • We delete the entry page: $ rm public/index.html
  • We modify the config/routes.rb to enter the following route map:
  • We create the heroku application directly on the heroku site from our computer merely using the Heroku’s gem
  • Now the web site will be visible on the following address: http://severe-stone-45.heroku.com. Sustitute the name by the name provided by Heroku and you got it. As the heroku repository is blank when we create the application we need to deploy the code to a specific branch, we deploy the code throuh this instruction

$ rake db:create
db/development.sqlite3 already exists

map.connect ':controller/:action/:id'
map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format'
# Enter the route to access to enter the dashboard
 map.root :controller => "dashboard"

rake db:migrate

heroku create
Created http://severe-stone-45.heroku.com/ | git@heroku.com:severe-stone-45.git

$ git push heroku master

jQuery is today the best js library, prototype is a challenger.The reasons why I think this are beautifully illustrated on the following post. To use jQuery in rails install the following plugin:

ruby script/plugin install http://ennerchi.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/plugins/jrails

Here is a list of existing functions which are available once we replace prototype+scriptacuolous for the jquery. Hopefully, this support will improve once we approach to Rails 3.

If you want to use both libraries, you will keep prototype js files, if you plan to use only jquery you could removed them. I particularly think that seems you have decided to use jquery there is few reasons to keep them.

Also, there are two ways to use jquery, I just found this interesting article which speak about a different way to use jquery, not using jrails but instead in a more unobstrusive way. Interesting point of view.
http://www.notgeeklycorrect.com/english/2009/05/18/beginners-guide-to-jquery-ruby-on-rails/

Kind regards and good weekend