From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2008-10-20T03:28:00+09:00
Subject: Re: How to go from a ruby script to a working website?

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On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 06:19:14PM +0900, Ralph Wood wrote:
>=20
> My main interest is developing web stuff, and for that I started
> learning programming through PHP. However, I discovered Ruby and
> immediately fell in love with it.
>=20
> I started following Chris Pine's Learn to Program and with the knowledge
> I got so far, I started building a few very simple programs of my own.
> The thing is that they're all limited to the Terminal (I have a mac),
> but what I really want is to use them through a web interface (inputs,
> forms, submit, etc) so I can also experiment with Javascript/AJAX.
>=20
> However, I have no clue how to do that and can't seem to find
> information on it anywhere. It seems the only way to access Ruby
> programs through a webpage is with the aid of frameworks like Rails and
> Merb, and they seem like too much trouble for what would be a simple
> one-page app. I guess could use Camping or only the Merb-core, but I
> would like to understand exactly what I'm doing, and just basically be
> able do it all by myself.

For extremely simple stuff -- like turning a basic command-line utility
into a Web application -- I use the hell out of eRuby.  The Wikipedia
page for eRuby offers a little information about it, including some
"hello world" level examples and brief mentions of three different
implementations:

  https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ERuby

The way it's used, once you get it working, is surprisingly similar to
how PHP is used with mod_php on most Webservers.  The difference is
primarily that it uses Ruby instead of PHP (obviously), in terms of how
one interacts with it.  There are a few gotchas in making the transition
from PHP to eRuby, though, as a bunch of stuff works subtly differently
(such as default paths).

--=20
Chad Perrin [ content licensed PDL: http://pdl.apotheon.org ]
Bill McKibben: "The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown
increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to
yield."

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