Setting up Ruby on Rails Environment in Windows

Ruby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. It is intended to be used with an Agile development methodology that is used by web developers for rapid development. Prerequisites: The following things are required in order to set up the ROR environment. 1 Ruby Installation 2 Testing the Ruby environment 3 Rails Installation 4 Setting up the server 5 Setting up the database 6 Testing the ROR environment 7 References Ruby Installation Rails framework is created using Ruby language and hence setting up the Ruby environment is the first thing to proceed. Download the latest ruby file ruby186-26.exe for windows and install it. Testing the Ruby environment Before moving on to rails, we need to test whether our ruby environment is set up properly or not. There are many tutorials available for testing it and you can check this blog Execute RUBY program on Command Prompt which is very simple to check at this stage. Rails Installation Once the ruby enviroment is ready, it is the time to install rails.Type the following in command prompt gem update --system [To update the system with latest gems for ruby] Ex: C:\ruby\prg>gem update --system gem install rails --include-dependencies [Installation of rails along with all dependencies] Ex: C:\ruby\prg>gem install rails --include-dependencies The above installation is completed by automatically downloading from ruby site. Setting up the server Once the application is installed, we need to check whether the server setup is completed.By default, WEBrick server is coming along with rails installation. There is no seperate installation required. In order to check the server, a sample application is required. Type the following in command prompt rails MyRails [creating an application called MyRails] Ex: c:\rails>rails MyRails Ex: c:\rails>ruby script/server [start the server & You will get a message console as given below....] => Booting WEBrick => Rails 2.3.8 application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000 => Call with -d to detach => Ctrl-C to shutdown server [2010-07-24 00:12:41] INFO WEBrick 1.3.1 [2010-07-24 00:12:41] INFO ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13) [i386-mswin32] [2010-07-24 00:12:41] INFO WEBrick::HTTPServer#start: pid=14200 port=3000 Now you can launch the application, http://localhost:3000 and a default welcome page will be displayed. If you have done the above process, then server setup is completed. Setting up the database Rails can be easily configured with SqlLite database.We can install the database by remote using the below command. install -r sqlite3-ruby Ex: c:\rails>install -r sqlite3-ruby [remote installation of sqlite3 database] In order to run the database, dll file is required and you can download here sqlit3 DLL Download Download and extract the file sqlitedll-3_7_0.zip[sqlite3.dll, sqlite3.def] in C:\WINNT\system32 folder. Now your system is ready for working with database. There are some firefox Add-Ons available in order to view the SQLite database. Testing the ROR environment You can test the above environment by writing sample applications.One of the simple tutorial to get started with is given in the blog, Ruby On Rails for Beginners Now the ROR environment is ready you can successfully run any type of applications in Rails. References 1 Rails Forum 2 Derek Anderson's blog 3 Ruby Forum 4 Execute Ruby Program on Command Prompt 5 SqLite Downloads 6 Ruby on Rails for Beginners