Rails - Sep 2006 - Building a static mirror of a Rails site?

Hello Rails List!
Thanks to those who commented on my prior thread about credit card  
handling; some smart, smart people on this list.

Here''s another one for you: I have a client for whom I''m
building a
site. They insist on using their existing webhost, which runs PHP  
4.3. OK, cool.

Luckily, for now, the site is going to be largely static. I could  
use, say, Dreamweaver and build everything using Dreamweaver  
templates, but I would much rather hang the site off Rails for the  
following reasons:

1) Dreamweaver is US$400. Rails, SVN, and a text editor are free.

2) I''m likely to be more productive in Rails, since I haven''t
touched
Dreamweaver or its templating system for a few years.

3) Building it in Rails today offers a degree of futureproofing, for  
when the client calls me 6 months from now and says "we''d like to
add
a blog, a booking system, a forms repository, and oh... can we have  
the ability to edit everything over the web?"

4) OMGWTFBBQ. Rails is, like, my BFF xoxoxox <3

Then I got to thinking... I wonder if there''s a way to build a Rails  
site (which doesn''t use POST requests), and then dump the whole thing  
out – links, media, and all – to a set of static pages and files for  
launch on a plain webserver? I did a little searching on the web and  
on the Rails list; there were some folks a while back talking about  
using httrack, or wget to create a static mirror of a running Rails  
site. I gave it a shot with wget, and it showed some promise except  
for a few bugaboos:

1) "http://mydomain.com/controller/action" will get saved into a file
named "action" in a "controller" directory. The lack of .htm
extension on the file causes at least one webserver I tried this on  
to freak out and send the static file to the browser using a non-HTML  
content type. This, in turn, causes the HTML source to be displayed  
in the browser in plain text.

2) "http://mydomain.com/controller/action/" will fail (note the  
trailing slash) since no "action" directory exists. #1 and #2 could  
be solved if wget would simply save the output of "http:// 
mydomain.com/controller/action" to a file named "index.htm" in a
"controller/action" directory.

3) wget will save image/css/js files along with Rails'' new  
timestamping/cachebusting tack-on, resulting in filenames such as  
"image.gif?44702193412". This will, of course, break the static site,
since the webserver strips everything after the "?" when trying to  
access whatever file.

So – what do you think? Comments? Suggestions? Links to prior art  
that I might have missed?

Cheers,
Steven Luscher (BDes Hons., Provisional RGD)
{
     c = Steven Luscher Design;
     w = http://www.stevenluscherdesign.com/
}




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Steven Luscher wrote:
> *Then I got to thinking... I wonder if there''s a way to build a
Rails
> site (which doesn''t use POST requests), and then dump the whole
thing
> out – links, media, and all – to a set of static pages and files for 
> launch on a plain webserver?* I did a little searching on the web and on 
Could you use page caching on all controllers/action. Visit all pages 
(perhaps programatically with a rake task) and then copy all the file in 
public/ up to the webserver (perhaps with a rake task or Capistrano setup).

Eric


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On 9/11/06, Steven Luscher
<railslist-/zrraIZ5Wu9FX4DOhmH6ppOMunqAqVKM@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> using httrack, or wget to
> create a static mirror of a running Rails site. I gave it a shot with wget,
> and it showed some promise except for a few bugaboos:
>
> 1) "http://mydomain.com/controller/action" will get saved
> into a file named "action" in a "controller" directory.
The lack of .htm
> extension on the file
wget --html-extension
> causes at least one webserver I tried this on to freak
> out and send the static file to the browser using a non-HTML content type.
> This, in turn, causes the HTML source to be displayed in the browser in
> plain text.
>
> 2) "http://mydomain.com/controller/action/" will fail (note
> the trailing slash) since no "action" directory exists. #1 and #2
could be
> solved if wget would simply save the output of
> "http://mydomain.com/controller/action" to a file named
> "index.htm" in a "controller/action" directory.
wget --no-directories

man wget


-- 
Greg Donald
http://destiney.com/

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On 11-Sep-06, at 5:18 PM, Eric Anderson wrote:
> Could you use page caching on all controllers/action.
I was going to mention this, but thought I''d wait until someone  
brought it up. Could that actually work?

On 11-Sep-06, at 5:32 PM, Greg Donald wrote:
> wget --html-extension
> wget --no-directories
Thanks for the notes Greg! "wget -k --html-extension --no- 
directories" solves a couple of problems, but creates another; if  
we''re going to start letting wget rename links and tack on .html  
extensions, then when we eventually do launch the site on Rails, any  
links made to the site from the outside will break (http:// 
mydomain.com/controller/action.html will become "http://mydomain.com/ 
controller/action" again).

Steven Luscher (BDes Hons., Provisional RGD)
{
     c = Steven Luscher Design;
     w = http://www.stevenluscherdesign.com/
}

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Steven Luscher wrote:
> On 11-Sep-06, at 5:18 PM, Eric Anderson wrote:
>> Could you use page caching on all controllers/action.
> I was going to mention this, but thought I''d wait until someone  
> brought it up. Could that actually work?
As long as you remember to run the app in production mode, it should. 
Then simply use wget to traverse the site, triggering all actions, and 
upload the cached files in public/ (ie not the wget files) to the host.

-- 
Jakob Skjerning - http://mentalized.net

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Hi all,

I have a question about the following ticket. The patch provided on this 
ticket fixes the problem (for me). Despite this fact, I don''t see this 
code in the trunk. Can someone tell me why this is?

Another thing is that I tried to override this function in the lib 
directory, with the patch applied, but somehow, it still uses the old 
code. I wanted to fix my problem in a clean way by overriding the 
actioncontroller module. But I can''t get it working. And hacking a gem 
myself isn''t a long term solution.

Thanks in advance,
Jeroen van Doorn

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i was going to post the same question after i completed my first rails 
app. it would be so nice to have a rake command that would do this and 
create a whole new directory with all the static content!

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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Steven Luscher wrote:
> So ? what do you think? Comments? Suggestions? Links to prior art
> that I might have missed?
I have posted a similar question but got no replies... I am very interested
though! I guess a good rake task can do the job...

Bart


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