Table of Contents

Ruby instance family

The Ruby instance family on Simple Hosting is a perfect solution to host web applications.

You can publish any web application that uses Rack, including Ruby On Rails and Sinatra applications, coupled with the database of your choice.

The extensible storage space and multiple sizes make it easy and affordable to get started and grow your application over time.

Prerequisites

Users of Ruby Simple Hosting instances should have:

  • some knowledge of the Ruby language
  • some knowledge of git
  • an application which is compatible with Ruby 2.4 (MRI) or 1.9.3 in old instances
  • an application which is compatible with Rack
  • an application which uses Bundler to manage dependencies
  • the following installed locally:
    • ruby
    • bundler
    • git

Note: Usage of the Ruby instance is dependent on standard tools such as bundler and git being installed locally.

Directory structure

To be compatible with Rack, your application's files must adhere to a specific layout, containing the following directories and files:

  • config.ru: A Rackup file like the one specified in the Rack documentation
  • public/: If you have any static files, they should be in this directory

Ruby on Rails applications (rails >2) should work out of the box.

Example file structure: 

.
├── config.ru
└── public
    └── robots.txt

Installation of dependencies

In order for your Ruby application's dependencies to be installed, you must declare them in a Gemfile placed at the root of your project. This file must match the format indicated in the Bundler documentation.

Example Gemfile: 

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'rails', '~> 4.0.0'
gem 'debugger', group: :development

Note: During the installation of dependencies, the gems specified in the development and test groups will not be installed.

bundle install

Once your dependencies have been declared, you must generate a Gemfile.lock file by running the bundle install command. This is the file that will be used to install the dependencies on your instance.

Configuring Multiple Vhosts

If you would like for multiple vhosts to route to different Ruby applications on a single Simple Hosting instance, then you will need to configure the routing in the config.ru file.

A simple config.ru example below: 

map 'http://www.example.com/' do
     run Proc.new { |env|
        [200, {'Content-Type' => 'text/html; charset="utf-8"'},
             ['<!DOCTYPE html><html><meta charset="utf-8"><title>It works',
             "</title><b>It works!</b><br /><br />You've reached ",
             'www.example.com'
            ]
        ]
     }
end

map 'http://www.another-example.com/' do
     run Proc.new { |env|
        [200, {'Content-Type' => 'text/html; charset="utf-8"'},
             ['<!DOCTYPE html><html><meta charset="utf-8"><title>It works',
             "</title><b>It works!</b><br /><br />You've reached ",
             'www.another-example.com'
            ]
        ]
     }
end

Databases

Like the other Simple Hosting instance families, Ruby instances support three types of databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB.

PostgreSQL

Parameters:

  • Hostname: localhost
  • Port: 5432

Here's an example Ruby on Rails configuration with a PostreSQL database (config/database.yml): 

production:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: ruby-example
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  username: hosting-db
  password: 
  encoding: unicode
  pool: 5

MySQL

Parameters:

  • Socket : /srv/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

Here's an example Ruby on Rails configuration with a MySQL database (config/database.yml): 

production:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: ruby-example
  socket: /srv/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
  username: tony
  password: micelli
  encoding: utf-8
  pool: 5

MongoDB

Parameters:

  • Hostname: localhost
  • Port: 27017

Here's an example Mongoid configuration (mongoid.yml): 

production:
  sessions:
    default:
      database: ruby-example
      hosts:
        - localhost:27017

Pushing your application to your instance

You must use git to push your application to your instance and to deploy it.

Create a local git repository

First, in the root directory of your project on your local machine, run the following commands to initialize a Git repo to track your code's changes: 

$ git init
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Initial commit"

Deployment of your application

You can find the instance ID, datacenter ID and URL of your instance's git repo on your instance's control panel in your Gandi account.

Once your code is tracked by git locally, you must push it to your instance.

In the command below, replace INSTANCE_ID with your instance ID, and and DC_ID with the ID of the datacenter where your instance lives (dc0 for Paris, dc1 for Baltimore, dc2 for Luxembourg): 

$ git remote add gandi git+ssh://INSTANCE_ID@git.DC_ID.gpaas.net/default.git
$ git push gandi master

Then, run the deploy command: 

$ ssh INSTANCE_ID@git.DC_ID.gpaas.net deploy default.git

To deploy a particular branch or tag (a production branch, for example), just specify it as a second argument: 

$ ssh INSTANCE_ID@git.DC_ID.gpaas.net deploy default.git production

Logs and troubleshooting

Standard output (stdout) as well as errors related to the application's execution are stored in the following logfiles on your instance's data disk:

  • via SSH: /srv/data/var/log/www/uwsgi.log
  • via SFTP: /lamp0/var/log/www/uwsgi.log

This is useful, notably, for verifying that your application has started correctly.

Cron jobs

Like other Simple Hosting instance families, it's possible to run scheduled tasks (cron jobs) on Ruby instances. Environment variables defined by your application are also available in your cron jobs (see internal_design for more details on environment variables).

Example cron job: 

1@hourly 0 test (cd /srv/data/web/vhosts/default; rake my_namespace:some_useful_task)

For more information on cron jobs and Simple Hosting, see http://wiki.gandi.net/en/simple/anacron.

Internal design

Ruby instances use Uwsgi to execute your application's code. Apache is used to serve static files. Apache will serve the files that exist in a directory named public/ at the root of your project and will relay all other requests to Uwsgi.

The following environment variables are assigned and available in your application and in cron jobs:

  • RAILS_ENV=production
  • RACK_ENV=production

Additional information

Redis is not currently supported on Simple Hosting. If you'd like to see redis support, let us know on our wishlist.

Last modified: 10/16/2017 at 17:31 by Alexandre L. (Gandi)

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