Deploying rails as a sub-url

Rails
1

Hello,

I want to deploy a rails app as a sub-url to an existing site.

So, I’m using ProxyPass in apache to proxy urls for /foo to localhost
on port
10000, where mongrel is listening.

Unfortunately, the helper functions in Rails like link_to seem to
insist on
providing absolute urls (ie. /admin). That will break with this
scheme, since
the /foo in the URL won’t be maintained.

What is recommended for a deployment like this?

Thanks,
Mike

2

msoulier wrote:

providing absolute urls (ie. /admin). That will break with this
scheme, since
the /foo in the URL won’t be maintained.

What is recommended for a deployment like this?

Thanks,
Mike

You can use --prefix with Mongrel to specify the subdirectory you want
to run Rails under. E.g.:

mongrel_rails start -d -p 10000
-a 127.0.0.1
-e production
–prefix /foo

–
Michael W.

3

On Apr 6, 12:40 am, Michael W. [email protected] wrote:

You can use --prefix with Mongrel to specify the subdirectory you want
to run Rails under. E.g.:

mongrel_rails start -d -p 10000
-a 127.0.0.1
-e production
–prefix /foo

Cool, that works! I had a partially working solution by updating
routing with the prefix, but that broke access to the public
directory.

Thanks!

Mike

4

Mike, any chance you could post the relevant code from your httpd.conf
file?

I’ve been stumbling around, trying to figure this out, for a while now,
and I’ve yet to get multiple sites working on one box, without having
work done on DNS tables (which is not a possibility in this case).

With a lot of help, I eventually got RoR working for a single site
(OSX apache2 final-stage setup hints? - Rails - Ruby-Forum) using ProxyPass.

However, this ProxyPass method seems to be the wrong approach for
multiple sites on one box
(Multiple virtual host? - Rails - Ruby-Forum) since it demands the
changing of DNS tables, which I lack permission to do. [Commercial
hosting is not a solution for me.]

Dan.

5

Dan K. wrote:

However, this ProxyPass method seems to be the wrong approach for
multiple sites on one box
(Multiple virtual host? - Rails - Ruby-Forum) since it demands the
changing of DNS tables, which I lack permission to do. [Commercial
hosting is not a solution for me.]

What’s the problem? In httpd.conf you just need something like this:

ProxyPass /site1 http://localhost:9000/site1
ProxyPassReverse /site1 http://locahost:9000/site1

ProxyPass /site2 http://localhost:9001/site2
ProxyPassReverse /site2 http://locahost:9001/site2

And to launch each Mongrel you need something like (run from inside each
app directory):

mongrel_rails start -d -p 9000
-a 127.0.0.1
-e production
–prefix /site1 \

mongrel_rails start -d -p 9001
-a 127.0.0.1
-e production
–prefix /site2 \

–
Michael W.

6

The problem is that the images don’t show up, if I do as above.

7

On Apr 6, 8:20 am, Dan K. [email protected]
wrote:

Mike, any chance you could post the relevant code from your httpd.conf
file?

It’s just

ProxyPass /foobar http://127.0.0.1:10000/foobar
ProxyPassReverse /foobar http://127.0.0.1:10000/foobar

Unfortunately it’s not enough, since proxypass only fixes http headers
and not page contents. The link_to function and it’s brothers all seem
to want to use absolute urls instead of relative ones, a terrible
practice. I tried turning off that behaviour in the default html
options but it didn’t seem to help.

In the end I used the mongrel option suggested and it’s working great.
Still, I find it sad that Rails suffers from the same broken
assumptions about deployment as jakarta-tomcat.

changing of DNS tables, which I lack permission to do. [Commercial
hosting is not a solution for me.]

It now works for me with a combination of proxypass, and mongrel’s –
prefix option. Should work for you.

Mike