Using ISAPI Rewrite on Rails App with IIS and Mongrel as Windows Service

In setting up a multiple production environment in a single server, IIS alone cannot do the redirection of url nicely. When a RAILS app runs in IIS, it requires port number and to redirect domain name to the particular port number, ISAPI Rewrite can help. Below are some sample of how to redirect a hostname to the port required.

RewriteCond %{HTTP:Host} ^(?:www\.)?domain name\.biz$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain name.biz:3000$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP:Host} ^(?:www\.)?another domain name\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.another domain name.com:3001$1 [R=301,L]

Updated: 27th May 2009

Possible to do URL masking by using rewrite proxy

RewriteCond %{HTTP:Host} ^(?:www\.)?another domain name\.com$

RewriteProxy (.*) http://localhost:4002$1

Note: it will map to localhost:4002 and transparent to user as the url shown is www.anotherdomainname.com. You can point multiple domain name to a single web app.

To get this done:
1. Install ISAPI Rewrite.
2. Copy and replace domain name to your own domain name in ISAPI rewrite.
3. If you have more than one domain pointing to the same server, just add below the first domain.

Calendar Date Select for Ruby on Rails

CalendarDateSelect is semi-light-weight (about ~20k of javascript/css) and easy to use (but gets even lighter with bundle-fu)! It takes full advantage of the prototype.js library, resulting in less code, but maintaining a great deal of functionality.

Some of it's capabilities:

can pick a date, or a date-time, or a date with an optional time, as a popup selector or an embedded calendar!
speaks several different formats
is easy to localize
is extensible. Calendar Date Select doesn't do everything under the sun (which is a good thing), but you can build on top of it.
Installation / Usage

Install the calendar_date_select gem
sudo gem install calendar_date_select
Add a gem dependency to your rails project (in environment.rb)
config.gem "calendar_date_select"
Then, restart/start your rails project. All necessary files will be copied to your public folder.
Now include this at the top of your layout: (you'll also need to include prototype, if you haven't already!)
<%= calendar_date_select_includes "red" # or "blue", or "silver", or nil for the default! %>
# (if you want more control, you can get a list of stylesheets / javascripts via calendar_date_select_javascripts and calendar_date_select_stylesheets)
See the Demo for various uses of CalendarDateSelect.

Date Calculation in Rails

>> Date.new( 2008, 1, 1 ).to_time.advance( :months => 1 )
=> Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 +0000 2008

>> Date.new( 2008, 2, 1 ).to_time.advance( :months => 1 )
=> Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 +0000 2008

>> Date.new( 2008, 1, 1 ).to_time + 1.month
=> Thu Jan 31 00:00:00 +0000 2008

Extracted from here:

http://roninonrails.blogspot.com/2008/01/beware-of-rails-date-arithmetic.html

Get Month Name in Rails

To get month name as constants, do the following

require 'date'

for i in (1..12)

@month = Date::MONTHNAMES[i]

end

Date Format in strftime

Format	Meaning
%a	The abbreviated weekday name (“Sun'’)
%A	The full weekday name (“Sunday'’)
%b	The abbreviated month name (“Jan'’)
%B	The full month name (“January'’)
%c	The preferred local date and time representation
%d	Day of the month (01..31)
%H	Hour of the day, 24-hour clock (00..23)
%I	Hour of the day, 12-hour clock (01..12)
%j	Day of the year (001..366)
%m	Month of the year (01..12)
%M	Minute of the hour (00..59)
%p	Meridian indicator (“AM'’ or “PM'’)
%S	Second of the minute (00..60)
%U	Week number of the current year, starting with the first Sunday as the first day of the first week (00..53)
%W	Week number of the current year, starting with the first Monday as the first day of the first week (00..53)
%w	Day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0..6)
%x	Preferred representation for the date alone, no time
%X	Preferred representation for the time alone, no date
%y	Year without a century (00..99)
%Y	Year with century
%Z	Time zone name
%%	Literal “%'’ character

Attachment_fu Installation

Installing Attachment_fu plugin steps as follows:

1. Install Freeimage plugin for image processing:

sudo port selfupdate

sudo port install freeimage (link)

MacPorts installation notes can be obtained from here.

2. Install ImageScience

sudo gem install -y image_science

3. Install Attachment_fu

script/plugin install http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/plugins/attachment_fu/

Mongrel_rails

To use mongrel_rails in production, you need to create a service to run in your Windows Server.

Navigate to the directory where rails app are located.

Replace (service name) including bracket with your service name .

Here is the command:

Install service:

mongrel_rails service::install -N (service name) -e (environment. e.g. production) -p (port to be used)

Remove the service:

mongrel_rails service::remove -N (service name)

That's all. Then you can configure lightttpd to point to the mongrel web app.

To start the service from command line:

net start (service name)