Ruby/Rails and PHP? Is It Possible

[skeeterbug]

hi all.

i really like some aspects of RoR and i will be learning and applying it over the next few months.

having said that, i'm a little scared because i'm comfortable using a php forms class to generate linked select boxes (select box 2 changes as select box 1 is updated).

i'm under the impression this is doable in rails, but it isn't trivial - meaning i'll be burning a lot of time getting something usable. burning time doesn't seem like apleasant experience at this juncture - especially when i have it down pat on PHP.

can i mix these technologies on a limited basis or am i just out of luck?

tia...

can php be used in conjunction with rails?

[samsm]

You can use either/or on the same server. You couldn't jump into PHP in the middle of a Rails template if that's what you are asking. But you could have php pages available in your public directory.

Honestly though, doing linked select boxes in Rails with AJAX is pretty easy.

Someone else was asking about this recently:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=326963
ezmobius1 suggested this link:
http://www.roryhansen.ca/?p=9

[skeeterbug]

You can use either/or on the same server. You couldn't jump into PHP in the middle of a Rails template if that's what you are asking. But you could have php pages available in your public directory.

Honestly though, doing linked select boxes in Rails with AJAX is pretty easy.

Someone else was asking about this recently:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=326963
ezmobius1 suggested this link:
http://www.roryhansen.ca/?p=9

yah, that was me! -lol-

it didn't look easy to me, but i probably haven't just jumped into the "deep end," yet.

time to jump? i think so!

[samsm]

Here's an example I did some time ago:

  <% for city in @cities %>
    <option value="<%= city.id %>"><%= city.name %>, <%= city.state.name %></option>
  <% end %>
</select>
<%= observe_field('exact_city', :frequency => 0.25, :update => 'new_checkboxes', :url => { :action => :exact_city }, :with => "'city='+value" ) %>
<div id="new_checkboxes"></div>

Instead of states, I was looking at a list of cities and trying to get the exact city. Does that shed any light?

(and stick to one thread next time!)

[Packetloss]

It's cool you can use both. I was thinking of developing a frontend of site with PHP but develop the backend using Ruby (gotta love scaffold!). Would that run into any problems?

[samsm]

It's cool you can use both. I was thinking of developing a frontend of site with PHP but develop the backend using Ruby (gotta love scaffold!). Would that run into any problems?

Can you have two separate applications working on the same database? Sure.

However, in a situation where you are building something from scratch, I'd wonder what the purpose was. If you are making a backend with Rails, then you are probably setting up relationships in the models which could also be used for the frontend. It seems to me like by doing something in two languages, you might be doing some of the same work twice. You could easily argue that that is a problem.

[DougBTX]

I was thinking of developing a frontend of site with PHP

You can use ERB templates much like PHP, just replace <?php echo $XXX ?> with <%= @XXX %>. That's the default templating engine in Rails.

Douglas

[OfficeOfTheLaw]

It's cool you can use both. I was thinking of developing a frontend of site with PHP but develop the backend using Ruby (gotta love scaffold!). Would that run into any problems?

You mean use php for templating!?

That's what it was originally designed for, after all.

[alienzx]

If you want good templates along the lines of Smarty check out LiquidLiquid

[lirux]

It's cool you can use both. I was thinking of developing a frontend of site with PHP but develop the backend using Ruby (gotta love scaffold!). Would that run into any problems?

If you mean running the site on php, and then having something like admin.example.com using rails, it should be ok. You just create the site with php, then your admin section as a rails app, and they both interact with the same database.

I must tell you rhtml is very easy.. I don't know what level of complexity this site will have, but a setup like this probablly wont be worth the extra effort, compared with just runnng everything on rails!