From: "Carlo E. Prelz" <fluido@...>
Date: 2012-12-14T05:44:43+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby on rails or sinatra for dynamic browser application

	Subject: ruby on rails or sinatra for dynamic browser application
	Date: Fri 14 Dec 12 05:21:27AM +0900

Quoting LMH medchem (lists@ruby-forum.com):

> I need to write a simple html file or web application that will allow me
> to display the contents of a text file in a browser. This will involve
> some formatting and eventually some dynamic features like sorting. This
> is tabular data, so I am more or less creating a spreadsheet display in
> a browser. I don't know how to display a variable amount of data in
> html. I can hard code things, but for this application, the number of
> rows and columns will be variable.
> 
> I want to use ruby because I am using ruby to access a sqlite database
> from which the text file is created. Eventually the text file will go
> away and the application will just show data that is queried from a
> database. It makes sense to use ruby for the dynamic code on the webpabe
> if I am using it to access the database. I know that both ruby on rails
> and sinatra are used to create web pages, but I don't know much more
> than that.
> 
> Can someone point me to a tutorial or example of how to do something
> similar? Basically the application needs to open a text file (possibly a
> browse button on the webpage to give it a path), read the file into
> variables, and then use the variables to populate rows in a display.
> 
> Am I on the right track here?

If I were you, I would not pull in rails for a simple thing -
especially if you do not plan to have many queries. Webrick (the
pure-ruby web server included in the Ruby source) works 
very well. 

Remember that you do not need to serve HTML from a web server: simple
text files may be served as well.

Here is a short example about how you may serve text files:

--8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<--
require 'webrick'
require 'webrick/httpserver'

class Webserver < WEBrick::HTTPServer
  PORT=12345

  def initialize
    super(:Port=>PORT)
    mount_proc('/',method(:content).to_proc())
  end

  def content(req,res)
    res['content-type']='text/plain'      
    res.body= <<-EOF
This is
your content
EOF
    res.status=WEBrick::HTTPStatus::RC_OK
  end
end

Webserver::new().start()
--8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<----8<--

Basically, whenever you access port 12345 of your computer,
method 'content' is called, which here returns a hardcoded text - but
the text could be whatever.

Carlo

-- 
  *         Se la Strada e la sua Virtu' non fossero state messe da parte,
* K * Carlo E. Prelz - fluido@fluido.as             che bisogno ci sarebbe
  *               di parlare tanto di amore e di rettitudine? (Chuang-Tzu)