Deploying Rails to Tomcat as a WAR with JRuby

Assumptions

You are experienced with Java and have at least dabbled around with Ruby on Rails.
These steps worked for me on a Mac OS X 1.0.4.9 system
I’ve walked through the steps 3 times from scratch, but your mileage may still vary.

Install and Configure JRuby

First step download install JRuby. You can get it at:

http://dist.codehaus.org/jruby/

After pulling down the tarball,

1	jruby-bin-1.0.0RC2.tar.gz

, I unpacked it and installed at:

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/Applications/jruby1.0.2RC

Next, add the environment variable

1	JRUBY_HOME

to point to

1	/Applications/jruby1.0.2RC

. I added it to my

1	.bash_profile

since I’m running the bash shell by default on Mac OS X:

1 2	# JRuby export JRUBY_HOME=/Applications/jruby1.0.0RC2

Since I don’t want to take out my normal Ruby C install I just export it in front of the path just for this terminal session:

1	export PATH=$JRUBY_HOME/bin:$PATH

Double check that JRuby is setup:

1	jruby --version

This should return something like:

1	ruby 1.8.5 (2007-05-16 rev 3672) [i386-jruby1.0.0RC2]

Test With A Simple JRuby App

Go ahead and setup a directory for your JRuby apps:

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cd ~

mkdir jruby_stuff

cd jruby_stuff

mate test_java.rb

The last step assumes your using textmate. You can replace it with any

or any other editor you want.

Write a small JRuby app and save it:

[ruby]

require ‘java’

include_class ‘java.util.ArrayList’

list = ArrayList.new

list.add “Ruby”

list.add “+”

list.add “Java”

list.add “=”

list.add “JRuby”

list.each do

word

puts “#{word}”

end

[/ruby]

Go ahead and run the simple ruby script and test the java integration of JRuby:

1	jruby test_java.rb

Should see:

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Ruby

+

Java

=

JRuby

Rails Setup

Run:

1	gem install rails -y --no-ri --no-rdoc

This should take about a minute. There are lots of notes on how ri and Rdoc take a long time to run right now, but it wasn’t too bad, about 5 minutes on a duo core Macbook Pro, but you can keep the two switches and save a little time.

The next step is a bit odd. For some reason the rails and rake files don’t get installed as executable. You have to make them executable and then pick up the changes using the bash

hash

command.

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chmod 775 $JRUBY_HOME/bin/rails

chmod 775 $JRUBY_HOME/bin/rake

hash -r

Sample Rails App Running in JRuby

Then create your test rails app in JRuby. I used that idea of a book store application:

1 2	rails bookstore cd bookstore

Go ahead and do a smoke test by booking up the server.

1	jruby script/server

Should see a default rails page at

http://localhost:3000

ActiveRecord JDBC Setup

Kill WEBrick and install the ActiveRecord JDBC gem:

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gem install ActiveRecord-JDBC

Installing ri documentation for ActiveRecord-JDBC-0.3.1...

Installing RDoc documentation for ActiveRecord-JDBC-0.3.1...

Successfully installed ActiveRecord-JDBC-0.3.1

Modify the

1	config/database.yml

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development:

adapter: jdbc

driver: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

url: jdbc:mysql://localhost/bookstore_development

username: root

password:

Modify

1	config/environment.rb

to add jdbc as an adapter type. The code goes just above

1	Rails::Initializer.run

[ruby]

if RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /java/

require ‘rubygems’

RAILS_CONNECTION_ADAPTERS = %w(jdbc)

end

Rails::Initializer.run do

config

[/ruby]

Get the MYSQL JDBC driver at:

http://www.mysql.com/products/connector/j/

I grabbed the file

1	mysql-connector-java-5.0.6-bin.jar

and added it to my

1	$JRUBY_HOME/lib

. You can also add it to your

1	$CLASSPATH

instead.

Start your MySQL server if it isn’t running. I just do this from the MySQL Preferences pane.

Time to setup the databases:

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mysql -u root

create database bookstore_development;

create database bookstore_test;

exit

Go back to the rails app and create a model for Books.

1	jruby script/generate model Book

Create a simplistic migration script in the file

1	db/migrate/001_create_books.rb

[ruby]

def self.up

create_table :books do

table

table.column :title, :string

table.column :author, :string

end

[/ruby]

Run the migration:

1	rake db:migrate

Then create the scaffolding for Book:

1	jruby script/generate scaffold Book

Startup the server:

1	jruby script/server

Go to the URL and see the scaffolding using JDBC:

http://localhost/books/

Running the Tests

You should be able to run the rake command and run all the tests now. Instead you get an error about like this:

1 2	rake aborted! Task not supported by 'jdbc'

Turns out this is due to some hard coded values in the rails rake tasks. It has an easy fix by way of Ola Bini:

1 2	cd $JRUBY_HOME/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ActiveRecord-JDBC-0.3.1/lib svn checkout svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/jruby-extras/trunk/activerecord-jdbc/lib/tasks

This pulls down a file

1	jdbc_databases.rake

that I could only find in the subversion repository for now. Copy that file to the bookstore lib/tasks directory:

1 2	cp tasks/jdbc_databases.rake ~/jruby_stuff/bookstore/lib/tasks cd ~/jruby_stuff/bookstore

Time to run all the default tests with rake:

rake

All the tests pass!

Create the WAR

Kill WEBrick again and install the rails-integration plugin to deploy setup rake tasks to create wars:

1	jruby script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/jruby-extras/trunk/rails-integration/plugins/goldspike

It appears the war created uses the production settings so you’ll need to create the production database:

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mysql -u root

create database bookstore_production;

exit

Then fix the

1	config/database.yml

to include jdbc adapters for test and production:

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test:

adapter: jdbc

driver: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

url: jdbc:mysql://localhost/bookstore_test

username: root

password:

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production:

adapter: jdbc

driver: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

url: jdbc:mysql://localhost/bookstore_production

username: root

password:

Go ahead and run the migration for production as well:

1	rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production

Then you run:

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rake war:standalone:create

Assembling web application

Adding Java library commons-pool-1.3

Adding Java library activation-1.1

Adding Java library jruby-complete-0.9.9

Adding Java library bcprov-jdk14-124

Adding Java library rails-integration-1.1.1

Adding web application

Adding Ruby gem rails version 1.2.3

Adding Ruby gem rake version 0.7.3

Adding Ruby gem activesupport version 1.4.2

Adding Ruby gem activerecord version 1.15.3

Adding Ruby gem actionpack version 1.13.3

Adding Ruby gem actionmailer version 1.3.3

Adding Ruby gem actionwebservice version 1.2.3

Adding Ruby gem ActiveRecord-JDBC version 0.3.1

Creating web archive

This may take a few minutes the first time, but it appears to be much faster in subsequent builds.

Deploy to Tomcat

At this point you just need to drop the mysql JDBC driver in TOMCAT’s lib directory at:

1	$TOMCAT_HOME/common/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.0.6-bin.jar

Copy the bookstore.war file to

1	cp bookstore.war $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/

Then startup Tomcat:

1	$TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh

Goto the app at:

http://localhost:8080/bookstore/books/

Now do your happy dance! Or maybe just take a break and grab a soda.

Sources

I got this recipe for deployment together from several sources:

The general recipe was cobbled together from Buggy Velarde.
Ola Bini for the getting started tutorials with JRuby.
Nick Sieger for his post on ActiveRecord JDBC.
And the Rails Integration article on the JRuby wiki.

Things To Come

Deploy a big rails app.
Deploy to a commercial container like Websphere Appliation Server.