Rails - Feb 2006 - Missing text/html content in production (but not development)

Hi, everyone.  I''m getting a production server ready for a site
I''m
working on, and I''ve been a bit stumped by a difference between the 
development server (running under Webrick) and the production server 
(running under lighttpd).

Here''s the scenario: I''m working on a variation of an
e-commerce
system.  When someone finalizes an order with our system, we not only 
want to send them a confirmation e-mail message, but also a JPEG image 
with a mailing label.  The mailing label has been modified from an 
original template using RMagick.  So the bottom line is that I want to 
send the user an e-mail message with two different parts -- one with a 
MIME type of text/html, and the other with a MIME type of image/jpeg.

The problem is that everything works perfectly under Webrick: I get the 
text/html content, I get the image/jpeg content, and it looks just 
swell.  But when the same code (checked out from CVS, and double-checked 
that they''re running identical code) runs under lighttpd, the text/html
content is completely missing.  Looking at the source of the e-mail 
shows that the text/html portion of the message is completely missing, 
not just hiding or mangled.  The image is always there, without any 
problems whatsoever.

I''ve gone around and around with this, but can''t figure out
what''s going
wrong.  Can anyone suggest anything?

Here''s the mail-generation method that''s being invoked (from
another,
public method) in my controller:

      private
      def generate_mailing_label_email
        label = create_mailing_label(@order)
        OrderMailer::deliver_mailing_label_message(@order, @person, label)
      end

And here is the method that''s defined in OrderMailer <
ActionMailer::Base:

      def mailing_label_message(order, person, label)
        @recipients = person.email_address
        @subject = "Mailing label for MySite order ##{order.id}"
        @from = "CustomerService@MySite.com"
        @content_type = ''text/html''

        @body[:order] = order
        @body[:person] = person

        attachment :content_type => ''image/jpeg'', :body
=> label
     
    end


mailing_label_message.rhtml is a simple bit of HTML, with one ERb call 
in it -- an invocation of link_to.

By the way, when I run the production server under WEBrick, I get the 
same output as with lighttpd. So this seems to be a problem with the 
production server.  I don''t see any obvious permission issues, and
I''m
certainly not getting any error logged to production.log (or anywhere 
else I can see).

I''m guessing that I have either discovered a weird bug, that my system 
is configured incorrectly, or that I''ve missed an obvious point about 
sending e-mail with attachments.  (In reverse order of probabilities, I 
would say.)  Whatever it is, please enlighten me!

Thanks,

Reuven

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On Sat, 2006-02-18 at 22:25 -0500, Reuven M. Lerner
wrote:
> Hi, everyone.  I''m getting a production server ready for a site
I''m
> working on, and I''ve been a bit stumped by a difference between
the
> development server (running under Webrick) and the production server
> (running under lighttpd).
> 
> Here''s the scenario: I''m working on a variation of an
e-commerce
> system.  When someone finalizes an order with our system, we not only
> want to send them a confirmation e-mail message, but also a JPEG image
> with a mailing label.  The mailing label has been modified from an
> original template using RMagick.  So the bottom line is that I want to
> send the user an e-mail message with two different parts -- one with a
> MIME type of text/html, and the other with a MIME type of image/jpeg.
> 
> The problem is that everything works perfectly under Webrick: I get
> the text/html content, I get the image/jpeg content, and it looks just
> swell.  But when the same code (checked out from CVS, and
> double-checked that they''re running identical code) runs under
> lighttpd, the text/html content is completely missing.  Looking at the
> source of the e-mail shows that the text/html portion of the message
> is completely missing, not just hiding or mangled.  The image is
> always there, without any problems whatsoever.
> 
> I''ve gone around and around with this, but can''t figure
out what''s
> going wrong.  Can anyone suggest anything?
> 
> Here''s the mail-generation method that''s being invoked
(from another,
> public method) in my controller:
>           private
>           def generate_mailing_label_email
>             label = create_mailing_label(@order)
>             OrderMailer::deliver_mailing_label_message(@order,
>         @person, label)
>           end
> And here is the method that''s defined in OrderMailer <
> ActionMailer::Base:
>           def mailing_label_message(order, person, label)
>             @recipients = person.email_address
>             @subject = "Mailing label for MySite order
##{order.id}"
>             @from = "CustomerService@MySite.com"
>             @content_type = ''text/html''
>         
>             @body[:order] = order
>             @body[:person] = person
>         
>             attachment :content_type => ''image/jpeg'',
:body => label
>         
>         end
> mailing_label_message.rhtml is a simple bit of HTML, with one ERb call
> in it -- an invocation of link_to.
> 
> By the way, when I run the production server under WEBrick, I get the
> same output as with lighttpd. So this seems to be a problem with the
> production server.  I don''t see any obvious permission issues, and
I''m
> certainly not getting any error logged to production.log (or anywhere
> else I can see).
> 
> I''m guessing that I have either discovered a weird bug, that my
system
> is configured incorrectly, or that I''ve missed an obvious point
about
> sending e-mail with attachments.  (In reverse order of probabilities,
> I would say.)  Whatever it is, please enlighten me!
----
don''t know if this is your first venture into production mode but I
definitely noticed prolonged effects of session caching in production
mode which manifest differently than development mode when you are
adjusting/changing controller code.

What I do before I panic is to kill the httpd service (I don''t use
lighttpd) and clear out the sessions (rm /tmp/ruby.sess*) and then
restart the httpd service and try again.

Other than that, I am still in learning mode and probably can''t help.

PS...love the articles

Craig

Hi, Craig.  You wrote:
> don''t know if this is your first venture into production mode but
I
> definitely noticed prolonged effects of session caching in production
> mode which manifest differently than development mode when you are
> adjusting/changing controller code.
>
> What I do before I panic is to kill the httpd service (I don''t use
> lighttpd) and clear out the sessions (rm /tmp/ruby.sess*) and then
> restart the httpd service and try again.
>   
A good suggestion -- but I''m already killing lighttpd and
dispatch.fcgi,
then restarting them, when I test my code.  Also, I wrapped the code 
that sends a mailing label into its own publicly accessible URL, just so 
that I could test it without putting through a full order -- and I had 
the same problems when invoking that URL from lynx, without any cached 
baggage to speak of.

I removed existing sessions (after killing, and before restarting, 
lighttpd) just to see if you were right -- and unfortunately, this 
didn''t have any effect.
> PS...love the articles
Thanks!

Reuven