How to configure Ruby on Rails with Oracle?

Question

There's several pages on the web that discuss this, but most are out of date or inaccurate in some way.

What's the scoop?

Answer 1

Build ruby, gem, and rails

as per http://rubyonrails.org/download:

build ruby
build gem
use gem to install rails

Get Oracle Instantclient

Download from https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database-technologies/instant-client/downloads/index.html

You need these two packages for your architecture.

instantclient-basic
instantclient-sdk

Unzip these files, and make this link

cd instantclient_10_2
# .dylib for mac, .so for linux
ln -s libclntsh.dylib.10.1 libclntsh.dylib

Build ruby-oci8

Note, JRuby users don't need ruby-oci8, but do need the Oracle JDBC jar, either ojdbc6.jar or ojdbc5.jar depending on whether you have Java 6 or Java 5.

Download from http://ruby-oci8.rubyforge.org/en/index.html and run

# DYLD for mac
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/instantclient_10_2
# LD for linux
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/instantclient_10_2
ruby setup.rb config
ruby setup.rb setup
ruby setup.rb install

Test with this line and your database connection string.

ruby -r oci8 -e "OCI8.new('scott/tiger@orcl').exec('select * from user_tables') do |r| puts r.join(','); end"

Install activerecord-oracle_enhanced-adapter

Note, not activrecord-oracle-adapter as many older pages mention.

gem install activerecord-oracle_enhanced-adapter

Do that sweet rails thing

rails railstest
cd railstest
# edit config/database.yml as below
ruby script/generate scaffold comic title:string issue:integer publisher:string
rake db:migrate
ruby script/server

Test in browser

<http://localhost:3000/comics>

config/database.yml

Use database if you have a TNS entry, otherwise use host. Note that you have three entries (devel, test, production) to update.

development:
    adapter: oracle_enhanced
    database: orcl           # format is tns-name entry
    host:  myorclhost/orcl   # format is hostname/instance-name
    username: scott
    password: tiger

References

• http://emphaticsolutions.com/2008/05/22/connecting-to-oracle-from-ruby-on-rails.html
• http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/saternos-ror-faq.html
• http://drawohara.com/post/37166893/rails-unsucking-oci-oracle-on-rails-2-1
• http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/haefel-oracle-ruby.html