The Rails Playground is widely open now, let’s see when it lands ;-)

The most unique thing to say about it, is the ability to host unlimited number of Rails applications on ONE (yes, ONE as 1) Mongrel instance. Without this trick, there would never be a way for the Playground to even exist.

Oh, and yes, it has the best online source code editor for Ruby/Rails available, but that’s just a secondary effect :).

Give it a try! And be nice and leave some feedback (any kind of it is more than welcome, negative thoughts help as well).

Enjoy! :-)

*.isonrails.com is the Rails Playground project I have been solely working on since .. well, if you know Amy Editor – it was meant to be just a small part of it and main reason it all started.

I’m happy to announce, that after presenting the Playground on EURUKO 2008 Conference, it is now available for joining in.

The project is aimed to starting Rails developers or anyone wishing to just give Rails a try in few seconds without configuring and installing anything on her computer. All you need is a decent browser (Safari, Firefox, even Opera or Internet Explorer will do). No Ruby, no Rails, no gems, no setup.

Do not hesitate and give it a try! :)

P.S. – the project is currently in invitation phase meaning you simply request for invitation, we confirm it and you’ll be able to hop in. This is meant to be just a temporary, it will later be open to registrations without invitations to anyone.

Compiled on: iMac 2.16 GHz, Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X 10.4.9, Ruby 1.8.5 (2006-12-25 patchlevel 12) [i686-darwin8.8.1], PostgreSQL 8.1.8

Prerequisities: PostgreSQL installed from source (compiled – not difficult, and compiles smoothly), Ruby installed

• 1. get the PL/Ruby package by Guy Decoux.
• 2. ungzip the archive (double click will do, command-line fans – do whatever you like:-)
• 3. in Terminal enter the plruby-0.5.0 directory
• 4. type ruby extconf.rb --with-safe-level=0
• 5. type make
• 6. type sudo make install
• 7. now PL/Ruby is installed, we need to create some PostgreSQL hook before starting to write our stored procedures/functions in Ruby.
• 8. enter the template1 database, which is used as template for newly created databases. type psql template1
• 9. type create function plruby_call_handler() returns language_handler as '/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/i686-darwin8.8.1/plruby.bundle' language 'C';
• 10. create language inside the database create language 'plruby' handler plruby_call_handler lancompiler 'PL/Ruby';
• 11. quit the console \q, you are set.

Now you might want to create new database that will include PL/Ruby language. If you want to add Ruby support to existing database, simply repeat steps 9 to 11 for your database.

Let’s see some action, we will write one simple stupid function used as multiplier, written in Ruby. *Sorry folks, I don’t know how to disable typographic apostrophes in Wordpres, you have to replace ` to ‘ in the commands.*


psql template1
Welcome to psql 8.1.8, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

template1=# create database rubytest;
CREATE DATABASE
template1=# \c rubytest
You are now connected to database "rubytest".
rubytest=# create or replace function ruby_multiply(integer) returns integer as 'return 2*args[0].to_i' language 'plruby';
CREATE FUNCTION
rubytest=# select ruby_multiply(2);
ruby_multiply
----------
4
(1 row)


More to be found at: Installing untrusted PL/Ruby for PostgreSQL and PL/Ruby loves RubyGems and DRb by Robby Russel, and official PL/Ruby project homepage.