Admoo Labs » Web Development

JRuby, WAR, and Paperclip

Christopher Rigor — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:42:56 +0000

If you deploy a jruby on rails application as a war file, the file structure is different from a normal rails application.

|-- 404.html
|-- 422.html
|-- 500.html
|-- WEB-INF
|   |-- app
|   |-- config
|   |-- gems
|   |-- lib
|   |-- log
|   |-- tmp
|   |-- vendor
|   `-- web.xml
|-- favicon.ico
|-- images
|   `-- rails.png
|-- index.html
|-- javascripts
|   `-- application.js
|-- robots.txt
|-- stylesheets
|-- system

The rails directories are under WEB-INF while the files and directories normally on public/ are on the root directory of the j2ee web app. In glassfish, the root of a rails app named ‘labs’ is $GLASSFISH_HOME/domains/domain1/applications/j2ee-modules/labs.

Since the ‘public’ directory is not under RAILS_ROOT, you shouldn’t be using RAILS_ROOT/public when saving files. Instead, use Rails.public_path. Paperclip saves files on “:rails_root/public/system/:attachment/:id/:style/:filename” by default. You can add the :path option to change this.

has_attached_file :image, :styles => { :square => "48x48#" }, :path => "#{Rails.public_path}/system/:attachment/:id/:style/:filename"

The uploaded files should now be saved on the correct directory.

While this works, it’s probably not a good idea to save uploaded files on the j2ee-modules/ directory. When you undeploy the ‘labs’ app on glassfish, it will remove the ‘labs’ directory on j2ee-modules which includes all the uploaded files.

We can symlink labs/system to a directory outside of the glassfish directory. We can also use a different directory for paperclip which doesn’t use Rails.public_path or Rails.root. (I haven’t tested both.)

This is only an issue when deploying your jruby apps as a war file. If you’re using the glassfish gem, you don’t change the file structure at all. You just run jruby -S glassfish. If you’re using directory-based deployment on glassfish, undeploying the app doesn’t remove the directory.

Where are you saving the uploaded files? Let me know in the comments if you have other suggestions.

Running Glassfish in Server Mode

Christopher Rigor — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:59:57 +0000

jruby --server -S glassfish -e production -p 4400

Glassfish doesn’t accept an option to run in server mode, but jruby does, so instead of using glassfish -e production, use jruby -S glassfish and add –server.

JRuby and the Glassfish Gem

Christopher Rigor — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:23:14 +0000

The glassfish gem is another way to run a rails application in jruby. Before glassfish, I was using jruby script/server.

Using glassfish is simple. Install the gem and run jruby -S glassfish. However, I got a “missing gem” error.

$ sudo jgem install glassfish
Successfully installed glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java
1 gem installed

$ jruby -S glassfish
Starting GlassFish server at: 0.0.0.0:3000 in development environment...
Writing log messages to: /Users/crigor/labs/log/development.log.
Press Ctrl+C to stop.

Missing the Rails 2.3.4 gem. Please `gem install -v=2.3.4 rails`, update your RAILS_GEM_VERSION setting in config/environment.rb for the Rails version you do have installed, or comment out RAILS_GEM_VERSION to use the latest version installed.

rails 2.3.4 is installed. In fact, jruby script/server works

$ jruby script/server
=> Booting Mongrel
=> Rails 2.3.4 application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Call with -d to detach
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server

I checked log/development.log and found an error on the run method on config/boot.rb.

INFO: JRuby version is: 1.4.0
Feb 21, 2010 8:45:12 PM com.sun.grizzly.jruby.rack.RackApplicationPoolFactory getRackApplocationPool
SEVERE: exit
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/boot.rb:38:in `run'
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/boot.rb:11:in `boot!'
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/boot.rb:110
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/boot.rb:31:in `require'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/environment.rb:7
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/environment.rb:31:in `require'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java/lib/rack/adapter/rails.rb:98:in `load_application'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java/lib/rack/adapter/rails.rb:75:in `initialize'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java/lib/jruby/rack/rails.rb:25:in `new'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java/lib/jruby/rack/rails.rb:25:in `new'
	from