Question for rails multidomain application design

Rails
1

Hi to all,

I would design an application for multidomain support and my question is
what is the best practice to do this kind of application ?

Eg.:

I think to write my application handling the multidomain into routing
map:

map.connect “:domain/:controller/:action”
map.connect “:domain/:controller/:action/:id”

Assuming that I hanlde 3 domains for 3 different customers:

www.first.com
www.second.com

My customers requests could be:

http://www.first.com/public/home
http://www.second.com/public/home

routed to RoR application:

/www.first.com/public/home
/www.second.com/public/home
/www.third.com/public/home

RoR application controller could read the home data from model finding
by domain param (es. @home = Home.find_by_domain(params[:domain])

I would like to know if it is possible (and how can I solve) this kind
of routing (maybe using Apache internal rewrite ?).

Thanks in advance !

2

Gianluca,
I approached the same proble by using the domain as a unique :id and
‘scoping’ the entire database based on the incoming request.host.
Kathy

On Oct 31, 10:13 am, Gianluca T.

3

Why not something like this instead?

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
before_filter :setup_application_by_domain
protected
def setup_application_by_domain
@domain = Domain.find_by_name(request.domain)
# continue with your setup
end
end

The mapping idea, can be a little messy, specialy if you forgot to map
an action, i think it’s better to get the domain information from the
request object, and setup an instance of some model with all the
information you need.

On Oct 31, 10:13 am, Gianluca T.

4

On Oct 31, 2007, at 9:13 AM, Gianluca T. wrote:

I would design an application for multidomain support and my
question is
what is the best practice to do this kind of application ?

My customers requests could be:

http://www.first.com/public/home
http://www.second.com/public/home
GapGun and Vectro Non-Contact Laser Measurement

I haven’t done this in Rails yet, but I’ve written several multi-
domain (multi-subdomain) apps in another language, and IMO it is best
to initialize an object as one of your first steps (so withing
application.rb) which contains the baseline info the app needs:
domain name, layout preferences, options features if applicable, etc.

So, take all those configuration details you might otherwise have in
code, and push them into a db. Then the first task you do is querythe
db for the config details for X domain or subdomain. From that point
on your app is really like any single-domain app except that you use
the domain name to identify a specific database if you use a db per
domain, or it defines how you filter all db queries if you use one db
for all domains.

It really is easier than it usually first sounds like.

From what I can tell, even in Rails, there’s no need to map domain
to a route because the domain won’t change the actual actions you’re
calling. You want the actions themselves to adjust their behavior
based on domain which is no different than having them change based
on a specific logged in user. So, just like you would not change
routes based on users, you don’t need to do it based on domains. Make
sense?

– gw

5

Gianluca,
Once you’ve learned to ‘scope’ the @domain table based on the current
request.domain the rest is downhill.
If I had a table called ‘content’ I’d use the before filter to find
the domain and then gather the collection like;
@content = @domain.contents.find(:all) and so on for any table in your
application.
Kathleen

On Nov 6, 3:54 am, Gianluca T.

6

Thanks Kathy, Pablo and Greg, u r right.

Your suggestions was very good and drive me into right direction,

I solved the problem only setting 3 virtual hosts pointing to the same
rails app and simply setting the base application controller filter (no
routing map at all !):

@domain = Domain.find_by_name(request.domain)

Last question:

How did u solve the different public folder for each domain ?

In my application static contents must be separated for each different
domain www.first.com / www.second.com / www.third.com so I think I must
have 3 different public folder, one for each different domain ?

How can handle this into rails application ? (one possible solution is
to handle a parameter for images and stylesheets “:path” but I think
there is a better solution because in this case I have to use tha
“:path” parameter into each view…).

Thanks in advance…

–
Gianluca T.
TreNetMediaMaster S.r.l.
The Internet Technology Company
Telefono +39(049)776196
Fax +39(049)8087806
Visit us @: http://www.trenet.it - http://www.mediamaster.it
e-mail me @: [email protected]

Le informazioni trasmesse sono destinate esclusivamente alla persona o
alla società in indirizzo e sono da intendersi confidenziali e riservate.
Ogni trasmissione, inoltro, diffusione o altro uso di queste
informazioni a persone o società differenti dal destinatario é proibita.
Se ricevete questa comunicazione per errore, contattate il mittente e
cancellate le informazioni da ogni computer.

7

Hi Kathleen,

thank you very much for your reply !

Thanks to your suggestion I solved the problem for accessing “dynamic”
(database) contents.

The problem now is how to handle “static” contents for each different
domain (eg. public/images folder on rails app is unique for all the
domains and my goal is to handle static contents like
images/javascripts/flash in different folders (one folder for each
domain)).

One possible solution is to handle a parameter for images and
stylesheets eg. @domain.path but I think there is a better solution
because in this case I must set the @domain.path parameter into each
view…

eg.

I would like to know if is there a better (dry) solution…

Thanks in advance.