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Re: Google App Engine Rails Template

by joshmoore-3 :: Rate this Message:

Hi Chris,

I think that it is possible to develop ruby apps without the need to restart (http://dev.massivebraingames.com/past/2009/4/15/writing_sinatra_apps_for_google/). I will be honest I have not looked into this much. However, I think the problem with rails is that development mode seems to be incompatible with App Engine (I think it has something to do with the rails app trying to access the file system). I think if rails can be configured to not cache the app files it might work like it does for sinatra. I am looking into that now, if you have any insites please let me know.

About your last question I have personally not had any experience with converting an existing rails app to work with App Engine. So far I have worked completely with building new onces.

Josh

On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 5:05 AM, Chris Collins <xoptop@...> wrote:

Hi Josh.

This is a helpful tool for creating a skeleton app. It starts from the opposite end of the process than I have been using - creating my Rails app and then warbling it and making those tweaks listed in your script. But with your script it seems the idea is to create the app elsewhere perhaps and then copy the Rails code into the app directory once the skeleton has been created with your script.

The biggest problem, which you alluded to in your blog post, still seems to be the need to restart the dev server between code changes. I believe this has to do with the fact that the Jetty server, which normally allows hot deploy for native Java projects, does not allow hot deploy when a scripting language like Ruby, Groovy or Python is running on top of Java. A potential solution to this is to use jetty-rails. As of yet I have not figured whether it is possible to get it to work with an App Engine Rails project: http://fabiokung.com/2008/05/14/jetty-rails-gem-simple-jruby-on-rails-development-with-servlet-containers/

The other adjustment with Rails development on App Engine has to do with the ORM but is still related to the hot deploy problem with Jetty. Datamapper and Ola Bini's Bumble seem to be the best solutions at the moment. But because of the need to restart the dev server between code changes, it seems to be more efficient to develop a Rails app first outside of the Eclipse/App Engine IDE using a real database and ORM and then later modify the app to work with Datamapper/Bumble. At least that's the approach I have decided to take at the moment. The Eclipse/App Engine environment slows me down too much to allow my development to proceed at a productive pace. I would be curious whether you have discovered any useful tips for the process of converting a regular app from ActiveRecord+Sqlite/Mysql to Datamapper/Bumble+Google Datastore.

Regards,
Chris

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Josh Moore <joshsmoore@...> wrote:

Hi,

I just finished posting a rails template that creates an app ready to deploy on the Google App Engine. Check out the blog post http://www.codingforrent.com/posts/8001 and the template at http://github.com/joshsmoore/gaej_rails_template/tree/master. It is still a bit of work in progress. But, it should take care of the basics of getting a Rails app set up for deployment on the Google App Engine. Please tell me what you think.

Josh

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