Instructions for setting up IIS and jRuby

Question

Does anyone have clear instruction for setting up jRuby to work with IIS.

Edit:

What I'm looking for is step by step instructions for getting a Ruby on Rails application working on Windows using IIS and jRuby. The reason being is because I can't find anything other then "use Linux" when asking the question out in the wild. For most people Windows is the primary development and deployment environment so using a Linux based server is out of the question. Also IIS is included with Windows and provide superior integration with Active Directory so using Apache is out of the question also.

Last thing is using war files is a nightmare, please include instructions on how to deploy a rails apps by just copying the files or anything other then using war files.

Answer 1

Is it actually just a Rails app you want to deploy on IIS, or must it be JRuby? If it's just Ruby on Rails rather than JRuby, then here is your step-by-step guide. But if it's JRuby you want to get working with IIS, look no further. Below are the steps I followed; my environment is IIS7 on Windows 7 RC, Java 1.6.0_13.

1. First, I downloaded JRuby from http://dist.codehaus.org/jruby/1.3.1/jruby-bin-1.3.1.tar.gz.
2. Then I extracted the archive to C:\JRuby.
3. I set environment variable JRUBY_HOME to c:\JRuby\jruby-1.3.1.
4. I added %JRUBY_HOME%\bin to the path.

I'll walk through the next steps with screen grabs interspersed.

Let's run jruby to confirm that it was installed successfully:

C:\Users\Vinay>jruby -v
jruby 1.3.1 (ruby 1.8.6p287) (2009-06-15 2fd6c3d) (Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 1.
6.0_13) [x86-java]

OK so far. Let's use JRuby to install Rails:

C:\Users\Vinay>gem install json-jruby
C:\Users\Vinay>gem install rails --no-rdoc
JRuby limited openssl loaded. gem install jruby-openssl for full support.
http://wiki.jruby.org/wiki/JRuby_Builtin_OpenSSL
Successfully installed activerecord-2.3.3
Successfully installed rack-1.0.0
Successfully installed actionpack-2.3.3
Successfully installed actionmailer-2.3.3
Successfully installed activeresource-2.3.3
Successfully installed rails-2.3.3
6 gems installed
Installing ri documentation for activerecord-2.3.3...
Installing ri documentation for rack-1.0.0...
Installing ri documentation for actionpack-2.3.3...
Installing ri documentation for actionmailer-2.3.3...
Installing ri documentation for activeresource-2.3.3...
Installing ri documentation for rails-2.3.3...

Let's create a Rails app called jror:

C:\Users\Vinay\Projects>rails new jror
      create
      create  app/controllers
      create  app/helpers
      create  app/models
      create  app/views/layouts
      create  config/environments
      create  config/initializers
      create  config/locales
      create  db
      create  doc
      create  lib
      create  lib/tasks
      create  log
      create  public/images
      create  public/javascripts
      create  public/stylesheets
      create  script/performance
      create  test/fixtures
      create  test/functional
      create  test/integration
      create  test/performance
      create  test/unit
      create  vendor
      create  vendor/plugins
      create  tmp/sessions
      create  tmp/sockets
      create  tmp/cache
      create  tmp/pids
      create  Rakefile
      create  README
      create  app/controllers/application_controller.rb
      create  app/helpers/application_helper.rb
      create  config/database.yml
      create  config/routes.rb
      create  config/locales/en.yml
      create  config/initializers/backtrace_silencers.rb
      create  config/initializers/inflections.rb
      create  config/initializers/mime_types.rb
      create  config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb
      create  config/initializers/session_store.rb
      create  config/environment.rb
      create  config/boot.rb
      create  config/environments/production.rb
      create  config/environments/development.rb
      create  config/environments/test.rb
      create  script/about
      create  script/console
      create  script/dbconsole
      create  script/destroy
      create  script/generate
      create  script/runner
      create  script/server
      create  script/plugin
      create  script/performance/benchmarker
      create  script/performance/profiler
      create  test/test_helper.rb
      create  test/performance/browsing_test.rb
      create  public/404.html
      create  public/422.html
      create  public/500.html
      create  public/index.html
      create  public/favicon.ico
      create  public/robots.txt
      create  public/images/rails.png
      create  public/javascripts/prototype.js
      create  public/javascripts/effects.js
      create  public/javascripts/dragdrop.js
      create  public/javascripts/controls.js
      create  public/javascripts/application.js
      create  doc/README_FOR_APP
      create  log/server.log
      create  log/production.log
      create  log/development.log
      create  log/test.log

Let's run WEBrick to make sure everything's working as expected:

C:\Users\Vinay\Projects\jror>jruby script/server
=> Booting WEBrick
=> Rails 2.3.3 application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000
JRuby limited openssl loaded. gem install jruby-openssl for full support.
http://wiki.jruby.org/wiki/JRuby_Builtin_OpenSSL
=> Call with -d to detach
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server
[2009-07-21 17:51:21] INFO  WEBrick 1.3.1
[2009-07-21 17:51:21] INFO  ruby 1.8.6 (2009-06-15) [java]
[2009-07-21 17:51:21] INFO  WEBrick::HTTPServer#start: pid=2440 port=3000

Navigate to http://localhost:3000/ and confirm that your Rails application appears.

Sure enough, there it is.

The next thing is to set up a mechanism whereby selected requests made to IIS are proxied to JRuby. To do this, an URL rewriter/reverse proxy is needed. I used ISAPI Rewrite 3 for this. You may choose to use a different tool (for example, Microsoft ISA). ISAPI Rewrite 3 is good value at $99 per server, and comes with a 45-day trial period.

For ISAPI Rewrite 3, I set up the httpd.conf configuration file as follows:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteLog "C:\temp\rewrite.log"
RewriteLogLevel 9
RewriteProxy jror/(.*) http://localhost:3000/$1

This proxies URLs of the form

http://localhost/jror/abc123

to

http://localhost:3000/abc123

So now, we can navigate to http://localhost/jror/ and see the request served by JRuby but through IIS:

And guess what: no wars! Any changes to your Rails app should come through directly.

Here's a screenshot of my Firebug console showing the response headers for that page:

Of course this is more of a development setup than a production one - but for production use you will probably need to use a production-ready appserver such as Glassfish, which will entail use of those pesky wars ;-)

If and when you do want to deploy to a Java appserver using wars, you can use Warbler for easy packaging of your app into a war.

To run on Glassfish V3, some additional steps are required. The quickest way to deploy and run your Rails applications is to use the GlassFish gem, which consists of only the GlassFish v3 kernel (Grizzly) and some utilities, so giving a minimum-bloat setup. Let's install the gem:

C:\Users\Vinay\Projects\jror>gem install glassfish
JRuby limited openssl loaded. gem install jruby-openssl for full support.
http://wiki.jruby.org/wiki/JRuby_Builtin_OpenSSL
Successfully installed glassfish-0.9.5-universal-java
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for glassfish-0.9.5-universal-java...
Installing RDoc documentation for glassfish-0.9.5-universal-java...

Run the Rails app on Glassfish:

C:\Users\Vinay\Projects>glassfish jror
Starting GlassFish server at: 192.168.0.17:3000 in development environment...
Writing log messages to: jror/log/development.log.
Press Ctrl+C to stop.

As you can see, you're running on Glassfish but still no wars are required! No changes are needed on the IIS side, other than (in httpd.conf in my setup) changing the proxy to point to the IP address and port used by the Glassfish server. If you want to go the whole hog and install the full Glassfish server and run Rails apps on it, you may as well follow these instructions from the Glassfish team. They cover installing and running the Glassfish, server, deploying and undeploying Rails applications and running the applications in production mode.

Here's what you need to create war files for the full Glassfish server.

Install Warbler:

C:\Users\Vinay\Projects>gem install warbler
JRuby limited openssl loaded. gem install jruby-openssl for full support.
http://wiki.jruby.org/wiki/JRuby_Builtin_OpenSSL
Successfully installed warbler-0.9.13
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for warbler-0.9.13...
Installing RDoc documentation for warbler-0.9.13...

Run Warbler:

C:\Users\Vinay\Projects\jror>warble
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/gems/specifications
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/specifications/rails-2.3.3.gemspec tm
/war/WEB-INF/gems/specifications/rails-2.3.3.gemspec
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/gems/gems
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/specifications/rake-0.8.7.gemspec tmp
war/WEB-INF/gems/specifications/rake-0.8.7.gemspec
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/specifications/activesupport-2.3.3.ge
spec tmp/war/WEB-INF/gems/specifications/activesupport-2.3.3.gemspec
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/specifications/activerecord-2.3.3.gem
pec tmp/war/WEB-INF/gems/specifications/activerecord-2.3.3.gemspec
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/specifications/actionpack-2.3.3.gemsp
c tmp/war/WEB-INF/gems/specifications/actionpack-2.3.3.gemspec
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/specifications/rack-1.0.0.gemspec tmp
war/WEB-INF/gems/specifications/rack-1.0.0.gemspec
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/specifications/actionmailer-2.3.3.gem
pec tmp/war/WEB-INF/gems/specifications/actionmailer-2.3.3.gemspec
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/specifications/activeresource-2.3.3.g
mspec tmp/war/WEB-INF/gems/specifications/activeresource-2.3.3.gemspec
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/app
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/config
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/lib
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/log
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/vendor
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/tmp
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/app/controllers
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/app/helpers
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/app/models
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/app/views
cp app/controllers/application_controller.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/app/controllers/ap
lication_controller.rb
cp app/helpers/application_helper.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/app/helpers/application_he
per.rb
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/app/views/layouts
cp config/boot.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/boot.rb
cp config/database.yml tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/database.yml
cp config/environment.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/environment.rb
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/environments
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/initializers
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/locales
cp config/routes.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/routes.rb
cp config/environments/development.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/environments/devel
pment.rb
cp config/environments/production.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/environments/produc
ion.rb
cp config/environments/test.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/environments/test.rb
cp config/initializers/backtrace_silencers.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/initialize
s/backtrace_silencers.rb
cp config/initializers/inflections.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/initializers/infle
tions.rb
cp config/initializers/mime_types.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/initializers/mime_t
pes.rb
cp config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/initializer
/new_rails_defaults.rb
cp config/initializers/session_store.rb tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/initializers/ses
ion_store.rb
cp config/locales/en.yml tmp/war/WEB-INF/config/locales/en.yml
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/lib/tasks
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/vendor/plugins
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/tmp/cache
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/tmp/pids
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/tmp/sessions
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF/tmp/sockets
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/warbler-0.9.13/lib/jruby-complet
-1.3.0RC1.jar tmp/war/WEB-INF/lib/jruby-complete-1.3.0RC1.jar
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/warbler-0.9.13/lib/jruby-complet
-1.3.0RC1.jar tmp/war/WEB-INF/lib/jruby-complete-1.3.0RC1.jar
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/warbler-0.9.13/lib/jruby-rack-0.
.4.jar tmp/war/WEB-INF/lib/jruby-rack-0.9.4.jar
cp C:/JRuby/jruby-1.3.1/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/warbler-0.9.13/lib/jruby-rack-0.
.4.jar tmp/war/WEB-INF/lib/jruby-rack-0.9.4.jar
cp public/404.html tmp/war/404.html
cp public/422.html tmp/war/422.html
cp public/500.html tmp/war/500.html
cp public/favicon.ico tmp/war/favicon.ico
mkdir -p tmp/war/images
cp public/index.html tmp/war/index.html
mkdir -p tmp/war/javascripts
cp public/robots.txt tmp/war/robots.txt
mkdir -p tmp/war/stylesheets
cp public/images/rails.png tmp/war/images/rails.png
cp public/javascripts/application.js tmp/war/javascripts/application.js
cp public/javascripts/controls.js tmp/war/javascripts/controls.js
cp public/javascripts/dragdrop.js tmp/war/javascripts/dragdrop.js
cp public/javascripts/effects.js tmp/war/javascripts/effects.js
cp public/javascripts/prototype.js tmp/war/javascripts/prototype.js
mkdir -p tmp/war/WEB-INF
jar cf jror.war  -C tmp/war .

C:\Users\Vinay\Projects\jror>dir jror.war
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 0C8D-1418

 Directory of C:\Users\Vinay\Projects\jror

22/07/2009  15:55        13,180,634 jror.war
               1 File(s)     13,180,634 bytes
               0 Dir(s)   7,730,462,720 bytes free

Phew!

Answer 2

You need first to install Tomcat. See this how-to for setting up Tomcat together with IIS.

With JRuby you are going to build WAR files. Just drop these into Tomcat's webapps folder and you are ready to go.

Update: Ok, you need to integrate two technologies that weren't meant to be used together: IIS and JRuby. The good thing is that JRuby is both Java and Ruby and you can use the best from both worlds. Ruby is more productive and fun to code with, but Java is better for deployment (especially when need to do so with IIS). So my advice still holds. Create a war file, install Tomcat and deploy the war file there. Deploying the war file is as easy as copying it in the webapps folder. These are the steps you need to follow:

• Install Tomcat
• Integrate Tomcat with IIS using the ISAPI plug-in (I can help if you need more info on this)
• Create a WAR file (Netbeans IDE can do that for you)
• Copy the WAR file to the webapps folder of Tomcat

If you still do not want to use WAR files have a look at this blog spot. It describes how you can run RoR with IIS. I believe that for JRuby the procedure would be just the same. Anyway, a CGI approach is the only way if you want to avoid WAR files.