Multiple domain names mapping to different rails app URLs

bingobob · October 19, 2010, 5:25pm

Well in my case I need to do two things.

redirect www.foo.com => www.foo.com/properties/1/
DONE
rewrite the resulting url www.foo.com/properties/1/ => www.foo.com
NOT DONE YET

I’m clear point 1 should be done in Apache config, as it is.
Are you saying point (2) should be done in Apache or Rails (routes.rb).

bingobob · October 19, 2010, 11:43am

Thanks Luis, I’ll refer to them and see if I can find a solution totally
via apache/modrewrite; I suspect I can! I need to get a handle on the
syntax of those rewrite commands, the command chain and regexes, should
be ok. I’ll post back to this thread with the solution when I crack it.

You need to wear many hats in this game at times, not every problem
seems to be solvable in the RoR app itself (or perhaps it is but the
pragmatic approach for a quick win is to ssh to the server and get
funky with with apache config).

bingobob · October 19, 2010, 5:43pm

You can get www.foo.com/ to display the content of properties/1 by
setting your route for “root” in your routes.rb file. In Rails 2, this
would be

map.root :controller => :properties, :action => :view, :id => 1

Now if you are trying to make property1.foo.com point there as well,
that could be done in Apache.

What it sounded like you wanted was to point www.foo.com to property/1
and www.bar.com to property/2. Am I mistaken at that point?

You can do redirects that fundamentally rewrite the URL from the
server’s perspective, without changing what the user sees in their
browser’s location bar. So you could avoid the whole routes.rb hack
I’ve outlined above by rewriting requests for [www.]foo.com to baz.com/
property/1 [NS,QSA] (those flags keep the URL whatever was written in
the browser. Then the user could enter www.foo.com/edit and the
request would be www.baz.com/property/1/edit at your server.

Walter

bingobob · October 19, 2010, 5:56pm

Please quote when replying.

bingo bob wrote in post #955467:

Well in my case I need to do two things.

redirect www.foo.com => www.foo.com/properties/1/
DONE

rewrite the resulting url www.foo.com/properties/1/ => www.foo.com
NOT DONE YET

I’m clear point 1 should be done in Apache config, as it is.

The way you are describing it here, that should simply be Rails
map.root.

Are you saying point (2) should be done in Apache or Rails (routes.rb).

I don’t understand your description well enough, but I suspect you’re
badly overcomplicating things.

I’ve never tried to do multiple subdomains on one Rails app, but off the
top of my head, here’s what I’d try first:

Use an Apache/Nginx rewrite to map, say,
http://www.foo.com/properties/1/ to
http://www.myrailsapp.com/www.foo.com/properties/1
Within the Rails app, set up the routes to recognize the subdomain
parameter:
(in Rails 2)
map.resources properties, :path_prefix => ‘:hostname’
Use params[:hostname] as necessary in your app logic.

You might be able to do without the Apache rewrite and simply dispatch
on request.host , but I don’t know if that would work.

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]

bingobob · October 19, 2010, 6:24pm

Did you try using the flags Walter suggested, [NS,QSA]? Can you post
your Apache rewrite rules?

Hopefully we’re not going too off topic with Apache

bingobob · October 19, 2010, 6:21pm

Could well be overcomplicating things!

Walter’s point here is sounds closest I think - I’ll try it.

You can do redirects that fundamentally rewrite the URL from the
server’s perspective, without changing what the user sees in their
browser’s location bar. So you could avoid the whole routes.rb hack
I’ve outlined above by rewriting requests for [www.]foo.com to baz.com/
property/1 [NS,QSA] (those flags keep the URL whatever was written in
the browser. Then the user could enter www.foo.com/edit and the
request would be www.baz.com/property/1/edit at your server.

As it stands apache modrewrite in place but not finished - working
though, :-)!

http://www.chaletcordee.co.uk/
as you will witness if you visit this is rewritten to this in the users
browser…
http://www.chaletcordee.co.uk/properties/1/
Fine, content works but I’d like this to be
http://www.chaletcordee.co.uk/
in the users browser

in a similar manner

http://www.apartmentnicole.co.uk/
goes to
http://www.apartmentnicole.co.uk/properties/2/
I’d like this to be
http://www.apartmentnicole.co.uk/
in the users browser

if you click on the photos page after visiting
http://www.chaletcordee.co.uk/
you get here…
http://www.chaletcordee.co.uk/properties/1/photos
I’d like this to be
http://www.chaletcordee.co.uk/photos
in the users browser, etc

phew - is anyone still reading - I doubt it ! :-).

bingobob · October 20, 2010, 11:11pm

Luis S. wrote in post #955491:

Did you try using the flags Walter suggested, [NS,QSA]? Can you post
your Apache rewrite rules?

Hopefully we’re not going too off topic with Apache

Sorry for delay, currently running with this

ServerName chaletcordee.co.uk
ServerAlias www.chaletcordee.co.uk

DocumentRoot /home/rupert/public_html/bookings/public

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/$ /properties/1/$1 [R]

ServerName apartmentnicole.co.uk
ServerAlias www.apartmentnicole.co.uk

DocumentRoot /home/rupert/public_html/bookings/public

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/$ /properties/2/$1 [R]

Will try [NS,QSA] but from what walter said I think I might need the
rewriterule to be different as well, more than just adding those flags?

bingobob · October 24, 2010, 7:40am

Been trying rewrite stuff all week but can’t get to where I want to be.
If anyone has an answer or another way - v keen to hear.

I did wonder about this…http://github.com/shuber/proxy or my routes.rb
file - or more apache tinkering…

this didn’t get me there either (lots of repeated stuff here)

bingobob · October 25, 2010, 9:15am

any tips - I’m not certain that I can achieve this with modrewrite.

bingobob · October 20, 2010, 11:32pm

Do try it, that’s the secret sauce that lets the URL remain masked.
The R flag you have there currently is doing a full external redirect
to a subfolder, but I don’t think you need that.

Walter

bingobob · October 25, 2010, 12:40pm

I have built something along these lines and here is how it might work
for you.

Have a domain model that maps a domain name to a property_id(decide
whether you are going to use www or no-www (http://no-www.org/) or
both if you want but it it is better to choose one or the other for
SEO and analytics.

so in your application_controller.rb put in some code that effectively
does a lookup on the domain model to find your property.

before_filter :domain_lookup

private

def domain_lookup
@domain = Domain.find_by_host(request.host)
raise DomainNotFound unless @domain # should always find it as
you defined it right?
raise DomainUnavailable unless @domain.live? # the on button for
the domain
raise DomainMaintenance if @domain.maintenance? # if you need to
pull it down
@host = @domain.host + request.port_string # I need this when
building some redirects as my setup is more complicated, SSL etc.
end

Now you have @domain.property available in your application wherever
you need it assuming you set up a belongs_to association. Now you can
refer to something like @domain.property.photos in your application.
I use @domain.css to pick up which of my CSS’s I want to use with that
domain. You can have as much as you like in there such as maintenance
flags etc.

Next decide what your root path is going to be and set map.root
accordingly. You may find there is no need to go through the property
controller at all for the end-user since the whole domain is about a
single property and you define that outside in your seed data or admin
console.

Now for the virtual host config in Apache.

<VirtualHost :80>
# define any of you domains as the servername, it
doesn’t matter which one you choose to be the main one (perhaps your
admin domain?)
ServerName property1.com
# list all of the other domains that run against the
same rails application remembering to pick up the www’s too and
wildcards work too!
ServerAlias
skichalets.com www.skichalets*.com
ahouse.com www.ahouse.com
myshed.com www.myshed.com
www.property1.com

            # then I rip off the www. using this rule

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1 [R=301,L]

RailsEnv production
      RailsBaseURI /

    DocumentRoot /srv/www/vhosts/yourapp/current/public

Warning if you are using SSL, you can only have one SSL host per IP
address. Basically the host name is not available to apache until it
has been decrypted by the host certificate, by which time it is too
late! I work around this by passing the property_id to the ssl
redirects and then use this to look up the domain. Just be careful
about rebuilding and building sessions.

So the logical flow goes like this:

user puts a URL into browser
apache picks up the host name and checks to see if it is the list of
hosts
rips the www off the host name if you want it to
send the request to be routes.rb in /srv/www/vhosts/yourapp/current/
config
your application_controlller.rb looks up the domain from request.host

HTH

O.

bingobob · October 25, 2010, 2:00pm

or to put it another way…

what does your routes.rb look like to get the root urls right for a
property (in my case properties anyway). also, totally happy to bypass
properties controller for the public views, just figured I’d done it the
rails way with a properties controller and separate actions for book /
prices / full_details etc.

bingobob · October 25, 2010, 1:50pm

Right - once more unto the breach and all that! Thanks for this, I see
what you mean. I’ve part implemented, the bit I don’t quite get relates
to finding the relevant property and what I put in the routes file to
hook it up (hooking up the default root to a domain/property).

The bit you describe here…

“Next decide what your root path is going to be and set map.root
accordingly. You may find there is no need to go through the property
controller at all for the end-user since the whole domain is about a
single property and you define that outside in your seed data or admin
console.”

My complicated (perhaps over) routes.rb is like this at present.

http://pastie.org/1230080

Here’s what I have just done in the last hour or so all good as far as
it goes I think !

migrated a new Domain model
property belongs to domain
domain has one property
(all hooked up and playing nicely)

App controller…

before_filter :domain_lookup

private
def domain_lookup
@domain = Domain.find_by_host(request.host)
# raises errors when necessary
end

bit of my header file for testing…

Request host is :
<%= request.host %>

Set domain in app controller is : <%= @domain.host %>

Property that belongs to this domain is : <%= @domain.property.name %>

as you can se this test works…the find works nicely…

http://chaletcordee.co.uk/properties/1
http://apartmentnicole.co.uk/properties/2/

apache side…just as you suggested, understood nice and simple (I like
the www striping! no-www is interesting)

ServerName chaletcordee.co.uk
ServerAlias www.chaletcordee.co.uk apartmentnicole.co.uk
www.apartmentnicole.co.uk

then I rip off the www. using this rule

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://%1 [R=301,L]

RailsEnv production
RailsBaseURI /

DocumentRoot /home/rupert/public_html/bookings/public

Stuck on next step!

Owain wrote in post #956838:

I have built something along these lines and here is how it might work
for you.

Have a domain model that maps a domain name to a property_id(decide
whether you are going to use www or no-www (http://no-www.org/) or
both if you want but it it is better to choose one or the other for
SEO and analytics.

so in your application_controller.rb put in some code that effectively
does a lookup on the domain model to find your property.

before_filter :domain_lookup

private

def domain_lookup
@domain = Domain.find_by_host(request.host)
raise DomainNotFound unless @domain # should always find it as
you defined it right?
raise DomainUnavailable unless @domain.live? # the on button for
the domain
raise DomainMaintenance if @domain.maintenance? # if you need to
pull it down
@host = @domain.host + request.port_string # I need this when
building some redirects as my setup is more complicated, SSL etc.
end

Now you have @domain.property available in your application wherever
you need it assuming you set up a belongs_to association. Now you can
refer to something like @domain.property.photos in your application.
I use @domain.css to pick up which of my CSS’s I want to use with that
domain. You can have as much as you like in there such as maintenance
flags etc.

Next decide what your root path is going to be and set map.root
accordingly. You may find there is no need to go through the property
controller at all for the end-user since the whole domain is about a
single property and you define that outside in your seed data or admin
console.

Now for the virtual host config in Apache.

<VirtualHost :80>
# define any of you domains as the servername, it
doesn’t matter which one you choose to be the main one (perhaps your
admin domain?)
ServerName property1.com
# list all of the other domains that run against the
same rails application remembering to pick up the www’s too and
wildcards work too!
ServerAlias
skichalets.com www.skichalets*.com
ahouse.com www.ahouse.com
myshed.com www.myshed.com
www.property1.com
            # then I rip off the www. using this rule

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1 [R=301,L]

RailsEnv production
      RailsBaseURI /

    DocumentRoot /srv/www/vhosts/yourapp/current/public
Warning if you are using SSL, you can only have one SSL host per IP
address. Basically the host name is not available to apache until it
has been decrypted by the host certificate, by which time it is too
late! I work around this by passing the property_id to the ssl
redirects and then use this to look up the domain. Just be careful
about rebuilding and building sessions.

So the logical flow goes like this:

user puts a URL into browser
apache picks up the host name and checks to see if it is the list of
hosts
rips the www off the host name if you want it to
send the request to be routes.rb in /srv/www/vhosts/yourapp/current/
config
your application_controlller.rb looks up the domain from request.host

HTH

O.

bingobob · October 26, 2010, 8:27am

Now I’m firmly back in the rails world here, any kind soul give me a
pointer as to how I might finish this one. I figure I need to modify the
routes file and perhaps conditionally modify the rails app home root
based on domain - what else?

bingobob · October 26, 2010, 9:02am

Multiple apps is definitely not what I wish to do here.
It’s a single app.

bingobob · October 26, 2010, 8:49am

I think you should run different rail apps on different ports and use
Nginx
to proxy to them. That should be simple enough.

–
Thanks & Regards,
Dhruva S…

bingobob · October 26, 2010, 9:12am

A quick look and the following points:

you are not scoping your property_id to the domain. If you go to
http://chaletcordee.co.uk/properties/1 you can change to properties 2
in the domain controller and you pick up the other property. Your
application controller should set an instance variable for the request
@property which you should always use as the parent of all subsequent
request in a before filter. I think you said you implemented this.

App controller…
before_filter :domain_lookup
private
def domain_lookup
@domain = Domain.find_by_host(request.host)
# raises errors when necessary
end

apache is doing some redirects here. You shouldn’t need any other
than the no-www stuff. Take them out. Let rails do the routing. You
only really need mod_rewrite if you are doing URL rewriting which I
don’t think you need.
your map.root invokes your welcome controller. This should work if
the welcome controller index action shows the details of the property
you have sitting in your instance variable @property

Sounds like you are almost there.

O.

bingobob · October 26, 2010, 9:07am

Oh well if that is the case then you can probably check the current
domain /
request.url in a before_filter inside application_controller and work
accordingly thereafter, that should be simple enough too…

–
Thanks & Regards,
Dhruva S…

bingobob · October 26, 2010, 10:49am

Inline - I won’t have a chance to test this out until a little later but
yes - thanks for this, think I’m getting it.

Owain wrote in post #957124:

A quick look and the following points:

you are not scoping your property_id to the domain. If you go to
http://chaletcordee.co.uk/properties/1 you can change to properties 2
in the domain controller and you pick up the other property. Your
application controller should set an instance variable for the request
@property which you should always use as the parent of all subsequent
request in a before filter. I think you said you implemented this.

App controller…
before_filter :domain_lookup
private
def domain_lookup
@domain = Domain.find_by_host(request.host)
# raises errors when necessary
end

So if I’ve understood you correctly, I’d do something like
this…something like I mean - just to see if this is on the right
lines?

App controller…
before_filter :domain_lookup
private
def domain_lookup
@domain = Domain.find_by_host(request.host)
# raises errors when necessary

New step find the property and set the instance variable,

do something else sensible if there’s a problem

if @domain
# guess the line below is the key
# set a property instance via the domain name
@property = @domain.property
else
# do stuff if there’s no domain…
end

properties controller

at present I find properties by ID - but with this new method I wouldn’t
need to do that, it’s already done in the app controller. should be
easy.

routes

this is where I possibly need most advice.
http://pastie.org/1230080

at present these lines…

map.photos ‘properties/:id/photos’, :controller => ‘properties’, :action
=> ‘photos’
map.contacts ‘properties/:id/contacts’, :controller => ‘properties’,
:action => ‘contacts’

get me to the various pages, but I do not want the /properties/id bit in
the URL, how do I redo this routing without /properties/id showing…

is it simply?

map.contacts ‘/contacts’, :controller => ‘properties’, :action =>
‘contacts’

apache is doing some redirects here. You shouldn’t need any other
than the no-www stuff. Take them out. Let rails do the routing. You
only really need mod_rewrite if you are doing URL rewriting which I
don’t think you need.

OK - I thought I just had the no-www stuff in there - but ok.

your map.root invokes your welcome controller. This should work if
the welcome controller index action shows the details of the property
you have sitting in your instance variable @property

I’ll have to think of a sensible place to point map.root, one this is a
front page for the app which isn’t a particular property at all - or I
might send it to one of the properties - haven’t registered a domain
name for it yet.

Sounds like you are almost there.

I think so ! :-).

O.

bingobob · October 26, 2010, 10:14pm

This might be a good time to mention that with the rails 3 redesign,
you can specify much more powerful constraints from within the router.
Katz’s website has a nice article on it:

The part I found most interesting was this:

Basecamp::Application.routes do
constraints(:subdomain => “support”) do
match “/foo/bar”, :to => “foo#bar”
end
end

As it turns out, you can swap :hostname (or :host) into the place
of :subdomain and setup different routes for different domains.
Using this in combination with some sort of hostname checking in a
before_filter is all I needed for my project. No need for any URL
rewriting in nginx.

Hope that helps.