I'm a bit lost: how to render rails/ruby on a website?

Ok, long time php guy doing my best to pick up ruby on rails by developing a small website for myself using only ror instead of php.

However i'm a bit stuck, and i think it is because i'm not exactly understanding how rails actually works.

I am running centos 5.5 / apache2. I have successfully installed ruby, rubygems, and subsequently rails and passenger. All these are 'working', i can run ruby commands, gem commands etc.

But how do I start using rails on my website? If I create an .erb or .rb file with some simple ruby commands, it just displays as plain text when I navigate to it.

Do I need to configure apache to 'execute' .rb or .erb files (simila开发者_Go百科r to the way .php files execute?).

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!

You might check out the Rails Getting Started Guide: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html

I suggest you read a huge tutorial on this topic: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html.

Ruby is the language, and Ruby on Rails is a framework. From the guide:

Rails is a web application development framework written in the Ruby language. It is designed to make programming web applications easier by making assumptions about what every developer needs to get started. It allows you to write less code while accomplishing more than many other languages and frameworks. Experienced Rails developers also report that it makes web application development more fun.

I'd read Chapter 4, if you already know all this, as it talks about the actual webserver.

Rails comes with it's own webserver, so Apache isn't needed.

Sounds like you need to really get a handle on Rails and what it is first. This site has some great information for beginners, and should help you understand what you are working with and your next steps to get an application running:

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html

I've also heard some good things about the information here:

http://railsforzombies.org/

Check out Ruby on Rails Tutorial for getting started in Rails.

As @Blender mentioned, rails comes with an in build web server called webrick. (Think of it same as apache .. for now)

so all you have to do is go to the rails project directory, and run the command

if you are using rails < 3.x

ruby script/server

if you are using rails > 3.x

rails server

once u done this your rails project will start in webrick server and by default in port 3000

http://localhost:3000

you may consider apache/ some other rails server setup for production deployment, but to get started you dont need apache at all

and welcome to ruby world ! :D

HTH

sameera