beginner: how can i just view this!?

[gBay]

hi, ive been given a site to maintain. its done in ruby on rails. ive been sent the whole website. ive been working my way through a beginners tutorial, and downloaded mySQL.
how can i view the website? do i do it from a cmd line?
thanks
- G

[daveporter]

Hi G,

Have you installed Ruby / RoR etc.. on your machine ?

Check out some of the beginers tutorials....

Lots to look at - google or go to RoR site and check out things there...
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails

Lot's of good books now - check out this site !
http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/

HTH - Dave Porter

[gBay]

hi, yes, ive installed ruby, rails and mySQL. ill have a look at your links. thanks.

[gBay]

when i created a ruby site using one of the tutorials, it created teh whole directory structure, including a script folder. to preview pages of teh site, i boot the server (weBrick) by navigating to the site solder using the cmd prompt: ruby script\server. but the website ive been given doesnt have the script folder in it so i cant preview any of the pages. any ideas? thanks.

[ReggieB]

If it were me I'd do the following:

Create a new Rails application with the name of the application you have. So say you application is called "myapp" you'd run:

rails myapp

in the target folder.

That will create a new application directory structure complete with server folder. Now copy application files you've been given over the top of the new install.

Then from the root:

ruby script/server

So in windows, I'd rename the current root folder of myapp to myapp_old, then:

rails myapp
xcopy /s /r /y  myapp_old myapp
cd myapp
ruby script/server

[gBay]

hi reggir,
ive tried that.
ive been chatting to someone on another forum and hes been really helpful, but still cant fix this problem. if you have the incliniation, the thread is here:
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/96093#199099
cheers
- G

[ReggieB]

I'm not sure of the etiquette of requesting in one forum, that a poster should move to another forum, so I'll carry on posting here.

The error you post here specifies a problem with the FileColumn class. File column is a handy utility that can simplify file uploads - I use it myself. I think the problem may just be that you don't have the file_column extension installed.

Have a look at this site:

http://www.kanthak.net/opensource/file_column/

It describes how file_column works and give a link to download the plugin that gives you the file_column utilities.

[gBay]

cheers reggie.

[ReggieB]

Glad to be of help. In the other forum you say your next step is the database. Sitepoint has a MySQL forum too, so you can post problems there too:

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=182

If you're running on Windows, The MySQL Adminstrator and Query Browser can make managing the database a lot easier. Also have a search for help with Migrations. Rails uses migrations to provide a structured way of creating and altering database tables. Once you've created the initial schema, migrations will do most of the work for you, in setting up the database.