If you do not have the NetBeans 6.0 IDE, go to the NetBeans IDE
6.0 Download Page, and download
a version of the IDE that contains Ruby support.
If you have a NetBeans IDE 6.0 installation that does not include Ruby support,
complete the following steps to add Ruby support to the IDE.
If your network uses a proxy, choose Tools > Options from the main
menu, select the Manual Proxy Settings radio button in the
Options dialog box, type the HTTP Proxy and Port for
your proxy, and click OK.
Choose Tools > Plugins from the main menu.
In the Plugins dialog box, click the Available Plugins tab,
and scroll to the Ruby category, as shown below.
Select the Ruby and Rails checkbox to obtain
Ruby support for the NetBeans IDE.
(Optional) Select the JRuby and Rails Distribution checkbox to
download and install the JRuby software
and the Ruby on Rails framework.
Note: You must have either Ruby or JRuby software
installed on your system in order to use the Ruby and
Rails distribution. If you do not have this software, you
must either install this plugin, or download and install
JRuby or Ruby software before working with Ruby projects
in the IDE.
(Optional) Select one or more of the following plugins:
Extra Ruby Color Themes. Provides additional editor
color themes for the Ruby file types.
Depot Sample. A Sample JRuby on Rails application.
Ruby Extra Hints. Provides additional
code hints for Ruby, such as the detection of
local variable name conflicts
and the detection of variable names that
do not follow Ruby coding conventions.
Ruby RSpec support. Provdes IDE support for
the RSpec framework.
Click Install.
The NetBeans IDE Installer appears.
In the NetBeans IDE Installer, click Next.
Read the license agreement, then select the I Accept the Terms in All
License Agreements radio button, and click Install.
After the installation is completed, select either Restart IDE Now or Restart
IDE Later and click Finish.
Configuring the IDE to Use Your Own Ruby Installation (Optional)
The first time that you create or open a Ruby project in the IDE, the IDE checks
if you have any other Ruby installations in addition to the
bundled JRuby software. If you do, the IDE displays a dialog box asking
you to select which software to use.
If you decide to install the Ruby
software later, you can complete the following steps to configure the
IDE to use your Ruby installation.
In the IDE, choose Tools > Options from the main menu.
Click Ruby, and, if necessary, click the Platform tab.
If you have not yet opened or created a Ruby project, the first time that you access the
Platform tab, the IDE displays
a Choose Ruby Interpreter dialog box. The dialog box shows a list of available Ruby installations,
as shown in the following figure. If the dialog box does not appear, skip to Step 5.
Select the Ruby interpreter that you want to use. If you do not see your
Ruby interpreter on the list, click Other.
Click Close.
If you chose Other in Step 3, or if the
Choose Ruby Interpreter dialog box did not appear, click the Browse button
as shown in the next figure.
Navigate to the location of your Ruby binary and click Open.
Note: You can also access the Ruby Options window by clicking the
Change button in step 2 of the New Project wizard.
Gems are third-party Ruby libraries. The IDE provides a Ruby Gems manager for
adding and maintaining gems. You open the Ruby Gems manager by
choosing Tools > Ruby Gems from the main menu. The manager
contains the following tabs:
Updated. Lists which of your installed gems have a
newer version available.
Installed. Displays a list of the gems that
have been
installed for the registered Ruby platform. See the previous
section for information about registering the Ruby platform.
If you are using the JRuby platform and the
IDE includes the JRuby and Rails Distribution plugin,
the list contains
the ActiveRecord-JDBC gem and the Rails framework, as shown
in the next figure.
New Gems. Lists the gems that you can add
to your Ruby platform.
Settings. Use this tab to configure the proxy.
Note. The RubyGems
wiki page provides information about how to enable the Ruby Gems manager to
manage a native Ruby gems repository.
You can access databases from a JRuby on Rails application in
one of two ways.
MySQL Adapter. The MySQL adapter is included
with JRuby. You use this adapter just as you would with
a native Ruby on Rails application.
JDBC Adapter. As mentioned earlier, the JRuby and Rails Distribution
plugin includes the ActiveRecord-JDBC gem, which
enables your JRuby on Rails application to access
database servers that provide JDBC 3.0 compliant drivers, such
as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, HSQLDB, and Java DB (also known as Derby).
The JDBC driver must be a pure Java driver. At the time of this writing, ActiveRecord-JDBC does not work
with the Sqlite JDBC driver.
To use a JDBC connection, you must obtain a JDBC 3.0
driver for your database server, and put a copy of the JDBC
driver in the JRuby/lib
folder. Depending on your installation, this folder can be in one of two places.
netbeans-install-dir/ruby1/jruby-1.0.2/lib
netbeans-user-dir/jruby-1.0.2/JRuby/lib
Note: The MySQL and PostgreSQL JDBC drivers are
bundled with the IDE. If your installation includes
the GlassFish application server, the Java DB
driver is also available. To locate the drivers, expand
Databases > Drivers in the Services window.
Right-click the node for the driver, and
choose Customize. A dialog box opens, which
shows the location of the driver file.
To use the JDBC adapter in a Ruby on Rails project, select
the Access Database Using JDBC checkbox when you create the project,
as shown in the following figure.
When you select this checkbox, the IDE puts the following
statements in the environment.rb file.
if RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /java/
require 'rubygems'
gem 'ActiveRecord-JDBC'
require 'jdbc_adapter'
end
When you use the JDBC adapter to access a database,
you configure the database settings
in the database.yml just as you would if you were
using that database's Rails adapter,
as shown in the following code sample.
adapter: mysql
database: my_development_database
username: fred
password: secret
host: localhost
When you create a Ruby on Rails project, the IDE adds
the configurations to the database.yml for the database server
that you select in step 2 of the Wizard as shown in the previous
figure. If you are
using a database server that is not in the drop-down list, you can
edit the database configuration
in the database.yml file after
you create the project.
Note: If your operating system's host file does not
contain localhost, use 127.0.0.1 instead. Note
also that with some systems, the database setting must be in lowercase letters.
Adding Databases
Several of the NetBeans tutorials require that you create a database for the
data tables that are used by the tutorial. The steps for adding a database
are different for each database server. The following instructions
are for the MySQL
and Java DB databases.
Adding MySQL Databases
If it has not already been started, start the database server.
(Optional) Use the following steps to create a user.
At a command prompt, type the following command.
mysql -uuser-p
Omit the -p if the user does not have a password.
Otherwise, when prompted, type the password. The user
must have global create user privileges or the insert privilege
for the mysql database,
such as the root user.
Use syntax similar to the following example to create a user.
CREATE USER 'fred'@'localhost'
identified by 'secret';
(Optional) Use syntax similar to the following to specify
access privileges. In this example, the user is granted all privileges
to all databases on the localhost database server.
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'fred'@'localhost';
Type quit and press Enter to exit.
To create a database, use syntax similar to the following at a command
prompt.
mysqladmin -u fred -p create mydb_development
Omit the -p if the user does not have a password.
Otherwise, when prompted, type the password.
If you have not created users, you can use
root as the user name.
For more information about creating MySQL users and databases,
see the MySQL Reference Manual.
Adding Java DB (Derby) Databases
If you installed a version of the IDE that includes the GlassFish application server,
the IDE is configured to access the Java DB database that is provided with GlassFish.
You can use the following steps to add a Java DB database from the IDE.
From the main menu of the IDE, choose Tools > Java DB Database > Create Database.
In the Create Java DB Database dialog box, type the Database Name, User Name,
and optional Password, as shown in the following example below.
(Optional) To specify a different location for the database, click Settings,
then click the Browse button for the Database Location,
navigate to the folder in which you want the database to reside, and click
Open. Click OK to close the Java DB Settings dialog box.
Click OK.
The IDE creates the database and adds a node to the Databases
section in the Services window, as shown in the next figure.
Registering Databases With the IDE
You do not need to register a database with the IDE to use
it
from your Ruby project. However, by registering a database you can
create and view tables, and exercise SQL commands directly from the IDE.
Registering Database Servers With the IDE
First, you must register the database server with the
IDE. The IDE has been tested with the following drivers:
Java DB 10.3.1.4
MySQL
Connector/J 5.0.7
PostgreSQL 8.2 build 506
Oracle 10.2.0.3
MySQL, PostgreSQL, and, optionally, Java DB are
already registered with the IDE.
The following steps show how to register other database servers
with the IDE.
If you haven't already, obtain a JDBC 3.0 compliant driver
for your database server.
In the next step, you specify the path to this driver.
The IDE uses the JDBC driver to access the database schema
and to query the databases. If
the database driver is not fully JDBC 3.0 compliant, you might
have problems using the IDE's database tools.
In the Services window, expand Databases, right-click the Drivers
node and choose New Driver from the pop-up menu.
The New JDBC Driver dialog box appears.
Click Add, then navigate to and select the driver's jar
file, and click Open.
The New JDBC Driver dialog box displays the settings for the selected
driver.
Click OK to close the New JDBC Driver dialog box.
The IDE adds a node for your database
server under the Drivers node.
Establishing a Connection to a Database Instance
The following steps show how to create a connection from the
IDE to a database instance, such as
the example mydb_development database described in the previous section.
In the Services window,
right-click the Databases node and choose New Connection.
The New Database Connection dialog box appears.
Select your driver from the Name drop-down list, such as MySQL (Connector/J driver).
Using the pattern shown in the Database URL text box as a guide, type the database's URL
into the text box.
For example, type
jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mydb_development.
Provide the user name, and provide the password if it is required, as
shown in the next figure.
Click OK.
When the connection is established, click OK to dismiss the dialog box.
The IDE adds a node for the connection under the Databases node. The
badge for the node shows that the connection is open. When you next start
the IDE, the badge will be broken to indicate that the connection is closed.
To reconnect, right-click the node and choose connect, provide your password
if it is required, and click OK.
Deploying a JRuby Application to GlassFish
By default, your JRuby applications run in the WEBrick browser. If you
want to deploy a JRuby application to the GlassFish application server,
you can package the application and its dependencies in a web archive
(WAR) file. Then you can make the WAR file available to the application server,
as shown in the following steps.
The deployed application will use the production database. Open
the database.yml file to ensure that the production configuration
is set correctly.
When you create your JRuby application, you are given the
option to add rake targets to support application server deployment,
as shown in the following figure. If you intend to deploy to GlassFish,
you should select this checkbox.
If you have an existing JRuby project that does not offer this rake
target, complete the following steps to add the Goldspike plugin
to the project. This plugin adds rake tasks that enable you
to create WAR files.
In the Projects window, right-click the project's node
and choose Rails Plugins from the pop-up menu.
In the Rails Plugins dialog box, click the New Plugins tab.
If you do not see an entry for goldspike, complete
the following steps to register the repository that provides
the goldspike plugin.
Click the Repositories tab.
Click Add URL,
In the Add Repository URL dialog box, type http://jruby-extras.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/rails-integration/plugins and click OK.
After the repository is added, click Close.
Click the New Plugins tab. You should now see an entry for goldspike.
Select the entry for goldspike, and click Install.
Click OK to start the installation.
Close both the Installation and the Rails Plugins dialog boxes.
Right-click the project's node and choose
Run Rake Task > Refresh List from the pop-up menu.
To package your application in a WAR file, right-click the project's
node and choose Run Rake Task > War > Standalone > Create.
The IDE creates the WAR file and puts the file in the
project's top folder.
If you are using the JDBC adapter, put a copy of your
database server's JDBC driver in glassfish-install-dir/lib
and start (or restart) the GlassFish server.
At the time of this writing,
you must use the JDBC adapter unless you are connecting to a MySQL database.
Place a copy of the newly created WAR file into the GlassFish
autodeploy
folder. For example, copy projects-folder/MyRubyApp/MyRubyApp.war
to glassfish-install-dir/domains/domain1/autodeploy.
In a browser, go to the URL for the application, for example,
http://localhost:8080/MyRubyApp.
