Sample Store Catalog using using JRuby and Rails

The RRCatalog Sample app demonstrates the usage of JRuby and Rails to implement pagination of data sets for a Store Catalog.
download RRCatalog sample code

Overview of the Technologies and Frameworks in the Sample Application

Rails is a Model-View-Controller based framework for the development of database-backed web applications in Ruby.

JRuby  is a 100% pure-Java implementation of the Ruby programming language. With JRuby and Rails you get the advantage that  you can run your web app in a servlet container like Glassfish or Tomcat.

The Sample Application

The sample application displays an online catalog of pets sold in a pet store. The image below shows the Catalog Listing page, which allows a user to page through a list of items in a store.

The Model 

The Model is your application's persistent business domain objects. Rails implements the  Active Record design pattern  for the model. An ActiveRecord object instance represents a row in a database table.  The item.rb and address.rb classes shown below were generated by Rails for the items and addresses tables. To learn how to generate Rails code with Netbeans 6 see Creating a Ruby Weblog in 10 Minutes . After model code generation you have to add the relationships. The Item class has a many-to-one relationship with the Address and Contactinfo classes. In Rails belongs_to is the many end of a many-to-one  relationship, and has_many is the one end. In Rails the convention is that the object with the foreign key belongs to the other object.

Code Sample from: app/models/item.rb  class Item < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :address   belongs_to :contactinfo end

Code Sample from: app/models/address.rb class Address < ActiveRecord::Base   has_many :item end

The Item class is a subclass of the  Rails ActiveRecord Base class. At runtime the Rails framework dynamically adds column names, and attributes (with getters and setters) to the Item class for each column in the corresponding items table. Rails uses default mapping rules for this to work easily:  the item class defaults to the items table, the address class to the addresses table, the primary key defaults to id, a foreign key defaults to tablename_id...

SQL  Sample for items table

CREATE TABLE items (  id VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL,  name VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,  description VARCHAR(500) NOT NULL,  imageurl VARCHAR(55),  imagethumburl VARCHAR(55),  price DECIMAL(14,2) NOT NULL,  address_id VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL,  contactinfo_id VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL,  primary key (id),  foreign key (address_id) references addresses(id),  foreign key (contactinfo_id) references contactinfos(id) );

The Controller

Controllers handle incoming http requests, interact with the model to get data and to process requests,  invoke the correct view, and direct domain data to the view for display.  In Rails, http requests are handled by ActionController classes which are made up of one or more action methods that are executed on request and then either render a template or redirect to another action. Rails routes requests to the controller action which corresponds to the URL mapping for the request. In Rails the default mapping from URL to action method follows this convention: http://host/controller/action/id .  For example the URL http://host/item/list calls the list action method in the item controller class shown below.  Note this code was generated using the Ruby Rails scaffolding support in the NetBeans 6 IDE.  Rails Scaffolding provides a series of standardized actions for listing, showing, creating, updating, and destroying objects of a class.  These standardized actions come with both controller logic and default view templates (I modified the view templates). The ItemController list action renders a view with a paginated list of item objects.

Code Sample from: app/controllers/item_controller.rb

class ItemController < ApplicationController   def index     list     render :action => 'list'   end   def list     @item_pages, @items = paginate :items, :per_page => 10   end

The ItemController is a subclass of  ApplicationController which is a subclass of the Rails ActionController Base class. When a URL has a controller but no action (e.g. http://host/controller/  ), Rails defaults to the index action. In the ItemController code the  index action method redirects to the list action.  The list action method calls the ActionController  paginate method which queries the Item Active Record model  for pagination. The pagination method creates the @items instance variable, which is an ordered collection of model objects for the current page (at most 10), and a @item_pages paginator instance, which is a class representing a paginator for an Active Record collection. The @item_pages and @items variables  are automatically made available to the list view by the framework.

After executing code, actions usually render a template in the views directory corresponding to the name of the controller and action, for example the list action will render the app/views/item/list.rthml template.

The View

The view layer generates a web page, using data from domain objects provided by the controller. In Rails, the view is rendered using RHTML , RXML, or RJS.  RHTML is HTML with embedded Ruby code.

Code Sample from: app/views/item/list.rhtml

<h2>Listing items</h2> <%= link_to 'Previous page', { :page => @item_pages.current.previous }    if @item_pages.current.previous %> <%= link_to 'Next page', { :page => @item_pages.current.next }    if @item_pages.current.next %> <table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0">   <thead>     <tr>       <th  scope="col">Name</th>       <th  scope="col">photo</th>       <th  scope="col">Price</th>     </tr>   </thead>   <tbody>        <% for item in @items %>      <tr>        <td>           <%= link_to %Q{#{item.name}}, :action => 'show', :id => item %>        </td>        <td>            <%= image_tag item.imagethumburl %>        </td>        <td align="right">           <%=h item.price %>        </td>      </tr>    <% end %>   </tbody> </table>

The view uses instance variables set by the controller to access the data it needs to render the rhtml. In the list.rhtml:

<% for item in @items %>
<%= link_to %Q{#{item.name}}, :action => 'show', :id => item %>
<%= image_tag item.imagethumburl %> 

<%=h item.price %>
<%= link_to 'Previous page',{:page => @item_pages.current.previous} if @item_pages.current.previous %>

The Show Action Method

In Rails the mapping for the URL http://host/item/show/1  ( http://host/controller/action/id ) to action method will route to the show action method in the ItemController passing 1 to the method as the id member of the params parameter hash. The show action method of the ItemController class is shown below. The ItemController show action renders a view showing the details of the item object corresponding to the id parameter.

Code Sample from: app/controllers/item_controller.rb

def show     @item = Item.find(params[:id])   end

The show action method  calls the Item ActiveRecord Base class find method which queries the items table creating the @item instance variable corresponding to the item with the attribute id (primary key) equal to the  id parameter. This is the equivalent of the following sql : select * from items where id='1' . The @item variable is automatically made available to the Show view by the framework.

The Show View Template

After executing code in the action, the show action renders the app/views/item/show.rthml template. Below is the RHTML for the item show view :

Code Sample from: app/views/item/show.rhtml

<h2> Detail of item</h2> <table>   <tbody>     <tr>       <td>Name:</td>       <td>  <%=h @item.name%> </td>     </tr>     <tr>       <td>Description:</td>       <td> <%=h @item.description%> </td>     </tr>     <tr>       <td>Photo:</td>       <td> <%= image_tag @item.imageurl %> </td>     </tr>     <tr>       <td>Price:</td>       <td> <%=h @item.price%> </td>     </tr>     <tr>       <td>Seller's Location:</td>       <td>         <%=h @item.address.city%> ,         <%=h @item.address.state%>       </td>     </tr>     <tr>       <td>Seller's email:</td>       <td> <%=h @item.contactinfo.email%> </td>     </tr>   </tbody> </table>

<%=h @item.description%>
<%= image_tag @item.imageurl %>
<%=h @item.address.city%>

The image below shows the resulting page for the url http://host/item/show/id, which displays the item's details:

Layout Templates

Rails layout templates let you put common html on multiple views (for example page headers,  footers, sidebars). By default layout templates are in the views layouts directory with a file name corresponding to the controller. To add a title and parrot image to the top of the Pet Catalog pages, I put this table in the app\views\layouts\item.rhtml  template:

Code Sample from: app/views/layouts/item.rhtml

<table>   <tr>    <td>Pet Catalog</td>    <td><img src="/images/banner_logo.gif"></td>  </tr> </table>

Conclusion
This concludes the sample application which demonstrates how to work with JRuby and Rails  to page through a list of  Item Model objects which are retrieved using Item Controller action methods, and displayed using Item rhtml View templates.

Running the Sample Application:

Setting Things Up

1. Download and install NetBeans 6.0 Beta 1. Get the full distribution so you can get the Java IDE, Ruby and GlassFish.
   
   
2. Configure JRuby to use the Derby Database (by default Ruby uses MySQL, but I use Derby because I like it. If you prefer MySQL, then ignore this ,  change the RRCatalog\config\database.yml file, and add the tables below to your MySQL db )
   
   1. Open the Tools Options dialog to find the location of your JRuby interpreter.
   2. Copy the following jar to your JRuby lib directory: derbyclient.jar (Tools > Java DB Database > Settings will give you the location of derbyclient.jar)

Open and Run the Sample code:

1. Download the sample code and extract its contents. You should now see the newly extracted directory as <sample_install_dir>/RRCatalog, where <sample_install_dir> is the directory where you unzipped the sample package. For example, if you extracted the contents to C:\ on a Windows machine, then your newly created directory should be at C:\RRCatalog.
   
   
2. Start the NetBeans IDE. Click Open Project in the File menu and select the RRCatalog directory you just unzipped.
   
   
3. Start the Java DB database as follows:
   
   
   • Select Java DB Database in the Tools menu.
     
   • Select Start Java DB Server.
     
     
4. Add a connection to the Java DB database as follows:
   
   
   • Select the Services Tab on the left.
     
   • Select Databases, Right mouse click and select New Connection.
     
   • In the New DB Connection window:
       for Name: select Java DB (Network)
       for URL enter: jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/pet-catalog
       for username enter: app , for password enter: app
     
     
5. Create the tables in the pet-catalog database as follows:
   
   
   • Under Databases, select the connection pet-catalog that you just created. Right mouse click and select Connect.
     
   • enter the username app and password app.
     
   • Right mouse click on pet-catalog and select Excecute Command.
     
   • In the SQL command window copy paste all the sql text from the file <sample_install_dir>/RRCatalog/catalog.sql,
     
   • At the top of the window click on the icon for Run SQL. This will create all of the tables and data for the application.
     
     
6. Run the project as follows:
   
   
   • Right click the RRCatalog node in the Projects window.
     
   • Select Run.  This will run the Application with the WEBrick server.
     

When you run the project, your browser should display the List Items page of the Sample Application (at http://localhost:3000/).

Run the Sample code on Glassfish:

1. Use the  WAR file in <sample_install_dir>/RRCatalog/RRCatalog.war or Create a WAR file:
   
   • In the NetBeans IDE, right-select the project, select Run Rake Target, war, standalone, create
     
     
2. Copy the WAR file (RRCatalog.war) to  your Glassfish installation "domains/domain/autodeploy" directory.
   
   
3. Enter the URL  http://localhost:8080/RRCatalog/  in your browser, you should see the display the List Items page of the Sample Application.
   

References

• To learn how to build a Ruby Rails app froms scratch see: Creating a Ruby Weblog with Netbeans 6 in 10 Minutes
  
• To learn how to run a JRuby app on Glassfish see: JRuby on Rails, NetBeans 6 and GlassFish V2 - Simplified Steps
• To learn how to run a JRuby app on Glassfish using the Derby db see: Using JavaDB with JRuby on Rails
  
• Rails framework documentation
  
• Ruby on Rails Wiki
  
• What is Ruby on Rails article
• JRuby Inside web site
• Ruby on Rails: Up and Running Book
• Rails for Java Developers book