Starting Rails Server in Production Mode

rails server -e production
OR
rails s -e production

Starting Rails Console in Production Mode

rails console production
OR
rails c production

rake db:migrate in Production Mode

rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production

rake log:clear

This is mainly useful while under development. Be careful with this as it will clear out your production.log file as well!

The capital_city action returns the xml like the following, for example:

<list>
  <item>Washington D.C.</item>
</list>

Here is what the entry in the routes.rb file looks like:

  get "cities/capital_city"

Your controller may look something like below, where call to City.capital_city is just a named scope defined in your model which takes a country name as an argument and returns the name of the capital city.

class CitiesController < ApplicationController

  # GET /cities/capital_city.xml?country=United States
  def capital_city
    @capital_city = City.capital_city(params[:country])

    respond_to do |format|
      format.xml # COMMENT THIS OUT TO USE YOUR CUSTOM XML RESPONSE INSTEAD  { render :xml => @capital_city }
    end
  end
end

Therefore, you need to create a xml builder file in place where you would normally expect the builder file to be, which is the view.
So, in this case, you would expect the builder file to be under views/cities/capital_city.xml.builder

Your views/cities/capital_city.xml.builder would contain:

xml.instruct!
xml.list do
  if @capital_city.empty?
    xml.item
  else
    xml.item @capital_city[0]['name']
  end
end

Then you should be able to hit http://localhost:3000cities/capital_city.xml?country=United States and see the xml response.

I recommend switching the HTTP method from ‘get’ to ‘post’ instead in the routes file, if for example, you are using the xml response for an AJAX request. However, for testing purposes it’s easier to use the get method first if you want to test it in your browser without special tools.

checking for rb_thread_blocking_region()... yes
checking for mysql.h... no
checking for mysql/mysql.h... no
-----
mysql.h is missing.  please check your installation of mysql and try again.

The way I was able to resolve it was to follow Boonedocks.net, since I’m also using MAMP for its MySQL Database instance.

The only difference is that I already had MAMP 1.9.4 installed and so I had to download the MAMP_components_1.9.dmg which contains the mysql-5.1.44 source code. MAMP 1.9.4 comes with mysql-5.1.44 but I needed the source code so I can compile libraries so the mysql Gem can link against it.

Here are the steps, assuming you already have MAMP or a separate standalone MySQL instance installed.

However, you should be able to follow similar instructions even if you don’t have MAMP installed. If you don’t have MAMP installed, correct the paths referenced below, as these ones below reference the MAMP directory.

1. Figure out which version of mysql you have installed by running mysql from the prompt or checking your phpinfo page
2. Download and Install the MAMP_components_1.x.dmg or the MySQL source code. The version should match your current mysql version though in order to avoid issues. Inside the MAMP Components, you should see a mysql tarball. You need to untar/unzip that.
3. cd into the mysql-5.x source directory
4. Assuming you have MAMP installed, type the following: ./configure –with-unix-socket-path=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock –without-server –prefix=/Applications/MAMP/Library
5. Execute: make -j2
6. Execute: cp libmysql/.libs/*.dylib /Applications/MAMP/Library/lib/mysql
7. Execute: mkdir /Applications/MAMP/Library/include
8. Execute: cp -R include /Applications/MAMP/Library/include/mysql
9. Execute: sudo env ARCHFLAGS=”-arch i386″ gem install mysql — –with-mysql-config=/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql_config

class Address < ActiveRecord::Base
  scope :search, lambda {|query| where(["name LIKE ?", "%#{query}%"])}
end

Last night I went a meetup sponsored by the Silicon Valley HTML5 Users Group called “jQuery Makes Writing JavaScript Fun Again”. The speaker, Dr. Doris Chen of Microsoft, talked specifically about AJAX so I thought I would post a few points of the talk here.

"Naked" AJAX is complex and difficult to wield
Using a JavaScript toolkit to "wrap up" the messy details is helpful
jQuery is the most popular AJAX toolkit and is free
Microsoft hearts jQuery and is contributing to a few new plugins
Templates plugin allows you to make a template for inserting dynamic data
Datalink plugin helps with keeping the UI and form data synchronized
Globalization plugin has international widgets, you can easily switch languages

You can view the slideshow jQuery Makes Writing JavaScript Fun Again

At this point you wish you could create a shorter name (alias) for it, right? Well you can!

One solution is to add to your ~/.ssh/config file something like the following to create your alias to your Public DNS:

Host ec2
  Hostname ec2-x-x-x-x.compute-x.amazonaws.com
  User ubuntu

The Host ec2 is the alias. You can call it whatever you like.

Replace the sample Hostname with yours. You can see what your Public DNS is by looking in your EC2 Navigation pane, in the Description tab.

Replace ubuntu above with the username the instance you’re using has available.

In order to ssh to your Public DNS, you can do the following:

ssh ec2

instead of having to do this:

ssh ubuntu@ec2-x-x-x-x.compute-x.amazonaws.com