Yes, you can run Ruby on Windows and eRuby on Windows IIS web servers. Ruby has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks as languages like Perl or Python do. Ruby is simple, straight-forward, extensible, and cross-platform portable language that has a syntax that is easy to understand. One of the strengths of Ruby is that it strives to be powerful but not complicated. Ruby has advantage over other OOP languages in that it can be used to code procedurally. Now you can use Ruby on your Windows IIS web server by setting up eRuby to process *.rhtml pages.

Using Ruby on the web

What is eRuby?

eRuby is an extension to Ruby that allows you to use the power of Ruby and embed its code into HTML files. The way eRuby does this is by inversing the HTML code into print statements before sending the code on to be interpreted. Code in the HTML file is translated into a mix of single and multi-line commands. This is all sent to the Ruby CGI interpreter for processing. eRuby is an easy way of using, learning and getting the power of Ruby on to a website. With eRuby deployment is a easy as uploading your files to your web server. This is to say deploying an application or webpage is no harder in eRuby than it's counterparts like PHP or ASP. I honestly believe that if Ruby popularity is going to increase that eRuby will be the reason. Unlike Rails eRuby has a very shallow learning curve and does not require a lot of effort by web hosting companies to set up.

About this tutorial

In this tutorial I am going to assume a few things that require that you be familiar with the technology used. This tutorial is not intended to be a lesson on the Ruby language but on how to get started by setting up both a working development and production environment. Once you get your set up going you can go on to other articles covering how to do some useful applications in Ruby.

Setting up a development PC

Windows IIS web server

Is you are running a server edition of Windows then you may already have IIS installed and ready to go. If you are running Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP you may have to go to one of the many tutorials on how to get IIS up and running on a Windows workstation. I am not going to give a tutorial on this and assume that if you want to use Ruby on IIS it is because you already have IIS on your PC. Here I using Windows 2000 server which is IIS5. If you are using Windows XP or Windows 2003 then IIS6 will be your web server. There should not be any differences with the exception that IIS6 needs a security setting to allow eruby.exe to work.

Ruby One-click installer

This is a single file that will install ruby on to your Windows computer. The only thing you have to do is click once or twice and wait. It contains the Ruby language itself, dozens of popular extensions and packages, a syntax-highlighting editor and execution environment, and a Windows help file that contains the full text of the book, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide. Click on the executable and follow the instructions. Ruby is also set into the your Windows path so that you can run it from any directory.

eruby.exe( for set up on the localhost)

To interpret HTML pages that have Ruby code embedded in them you need a windows binary of the eRuby interpreter. You can either compile this binary yourself using minGW or you can use the pre-compiled file dowloadable from one of the minGW mirrors. Once you have downloaded the binary add the eruby.exe to the bin directory where you installed Ruby.

IIS configuration

This tutorial is not geared towards the raw beginner so I will go straight to the instruction set for configuring the IIS web server. If you have never done this before then you may want to read up on it and train a bit before going further.

1. Go to Start->settings->controlpanel then click on the Administrative tools->Internet Information Services icons to open the administration window right click on the default web site or the website that will run Ruby and eRuby and click on "properties" to bring up the properties box. Go to the "home directory" tab and click on "configuration" then "add" what you get should look like the image below. Browse to your eruby.exe and then fill in the file type as ".rhtml". Save and restart the server if necessary.

2. Save this in c:/inetpub/www (or whereever you have your root directory set) as eruby_test.rhtml, run it.

<html>
 <head>
  <title>Welcome to eruby Test</title>
 </head>
<body>

<h2>eRuby test</h2>
<pre>
<%
	3.times { 
	    puts "Hello World"
	}
%>
</pre>

</body>
</html>

Setting up the shared host

.htaccess support on your web host

To gain access to the CGI executable on a shared web host you should use .htaccess. It is a simple thing and it allows you to control where eRuby can be used on the directory system.

	DirectoryIndex index.rhtml index.html index.htm
	AddHandler rubypage .rhtml
	Action rubypage /eruby.cgi

eruby.cgi ( for set up on the web host)

If your web host has eruby installed and you have access to ssh then you will only have to copy eruby from the server to your accounts root folder. When you copy the files from the folder it will auto-matically be renamed eruby.cgi

	$ cp local/bin/eruby public_html/cgi-bin/eruby

You can also compile your own eRuby and install it if your web host allows this on their servers. In most cases copying the web hosts file is best because you know that it is working and safe. But you may be in a situation where the web host has not installed eRuby but has nothing against you doing it yourself.

	$ cd ~
	$ wget http://www.modruby.net/archive/eruby-1.0.5.tar.gz
	$ tar zxvf eruby-1.0.5.tar.gz
	$ cd eruby-1.0.5
	$ ./configure.rb --prefix=$HOME/local && make && make install
	$ cd ~
	$ cp local/bin/eruby public_html/cgi-bin/eruby

Conclusion

Now that you have both a development computer and a web host environment that supports eRuby you can start taking advantage of the Ruby language. Let's go through a simple web application just to get a taste of what Ruby provides. A demo can be found here.

<html>

 <head>

  <title>Welcome to eruby Test</title>

 </head>

<body>



<h2>eRuby test</h2>



<% 

# Require the CGI library

require 'cgi'



# New CGI object

cgi = CGI.new



# prepare trap for form variables

# there is an artifact space sent from an empty form field so to verify the field values have to be

# Stripped of whitespace and carriage returns (strip) so (empty) will work properly.



username = cgi['username'].strip

profession = cgi['profession'].strip



%>

    

      <form method="post">

        Please enter your username: <input type="text" name="username"><br>

        Please enter your profession: <input type="text" name="profession"><br>

        <input type="submit" value="Send">

      </form>

      

    <% if username.empty? # Print out the form asking for the username %>

      <p>Please test my first Ruby web application by entering your name in the text box.</p>

    <% else %>

      Thanks, <%= username %>!<br>

        <% if profession.empty? %>

                <p>So you are unemployed? Don't worry learn Ruby and you will have a job in no time.</p>

        <% else %>

                <p><%= profession %> sounds like a fun profession.</p>

        <% end %>

    <% end %>

  

</body>

</html>

Resources

IIS on Windows XP

tutorials:

Web wiz guide

Ruby one-click installer

Get it from here:

http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=167

eRuby

If you are a wiz at using minGW or another windows compiler tool you can compile eruby yourself using the sources at http://modruby.net/ current: eruby-1.0.5.tar.gz a
pre-compiled binary can be found at the any of the minGW mirrors:

Windows zip file
unix style compressed file

eruby.cgi

Getting this file can be a bit difficult if you do not have ssh access to your Linux server. You can also request that your web host copy it to your domain root or directory that you will be using eRuby. I have tried downloading add upload this file but this method is not dependable. The file is binary and very sensitive to changes in placement.

Happy Publishing!

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