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Aptana RadRails:
An IDE for Rails Development
Develop Ruby on Rails applications fast using
RadRails 1.0 Community Edition
A comprehensive guide to using RadRails to develop
your Ruby on Rails projects in a professional and
productive manner
Javier Ramírez
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Aptana RadRails: An IDE for Rails Development
Develop Ruby on Rails applications fast using RadRails 1.0
Community Edition
Copyright © 2008 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of
the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold
without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing,
nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to
be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: May 2008
Production Reference: 1190508
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847193-98-8
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Nilesh R. Mohite (nilpreet2000@yahoo.co.in)
Credits
Author Project Manager
Javier Ramírez Abhijeet Deobhakta
Reviewer Indexer
Chris Williams Hemangini Bari
Acquisition Editor Proofreader
Shayantani Chaudhuri Chris Smith
Adil Rizwan
Production Coordinator
Technical Editor Shantanu Zagade
Bhupali Khule
Cover Work
Editorial Team Leader Shantanu Zagade
Akshara Aware
About the Author
Javier Ramírez has been developing Web Applications since before the term Web
Application was coined. Born in Zaragoza, Spain, in 1974, he started programming
as a hobby around the age of 11 assisted by his older sister. A few years later, he
got his first modem and became a regular of BBSes and Newsgroups. His interest
in developing server applications that can be accessed remotely comes from
those times.
He has learned—and forgotten—many programming languages, including Basic,
dBase III, Cobol, Pascal, SQL, C, C++, ASP, TCL, JavaScript, PHP, and Java, the
language on which he has focused for most of his career so far. He has held the
positions of programmer, analyst, consultant, team leader, post-sales engineer,
project manager, and software architect, totaling over 12 years in the IT business.
Having developed projects mainly for banks and other big corporations in Spain,
Italy, and the US, he co-founded some years ago a small software development
shop, which provided him with valuable experience about the difficulties and the
joys of entrepreneurship. After two years, he left the company in pursuit of new
professional challenges.
For the last two years, he has been proudly working for ASPgems, where he
discovered Ruby on Rails, which soon became his framework of choice for
developing Web Applications. He is one of the organizers of the Spanish Rails
Conference, also participating as a Speaker in the two events held so far.
He has also been an instructor on Robotics, Java, FatWire Content Server, and Ruby
on Rails, and a University Lecturer in the subjects of 'Software Engineering' and 'The
Java Programming Language', which he currently teaches at Universidad Francisco
de Vitoria, in Madrid.
Javier Ramírez holds a B.Sc. in Business Information Systems with First Class Honors
and a degree in Ingeniería en Sistemas de Computación
This book would have not been possible in its present form if not
for the work of the people at Packt Publishing. I'd like to thank
specially to Acquisition Editor Shayantani Chaudhuri for giving me
the opportunity to write this book and to Technical Editor Bhupali
Khule for polishing the rough edges, which were many. Abhijeet,
Adil, Shantanu, and Patricia also deserve to be in this list.
I would also like to acknowledge the fantastic work of the original
team of RadRails, and also of the developers behind Eclipse. A big
special thank you goes to Chris Williams, the current lead developer
of Aptana RadRails and the technical reviewer for this book. He
provided me with precious insight about a large number of issues.
Of course, any errors that might remain in the book are my own.
Thanks to the people at ASPgems, for trusting me to join one of the
most gifted team I know and for introducing me to Ruby on Rails.
I also have to thank Madzia, who gently allowed me to disappear for
uncountable evenings and weekends during the last nine months
without complaining—or without complaining much anyhow.
Finally, but not least important, I would like to thank my parents for
supporting my education.
A part of this book—the good one—wouldn't have been possible
without all of them.
About the Reviewer
Chris Williams has spent the last four years working on the Ruby Development
Tools project to bring Ruby tooling to the Eclipse IDE, and has been the lead
developer of RadRails since joining Aptana in the first half of 2007. Prior to joining
Aptana, Chris has worked in R&D for both Paychex Inc. and the Xerox Corporation.
Chris lives with his wife and dog in Rochester, New York.
Thanks to Kyle Shank, Matt Kent, and Marc Baumbach for creating
RadRails; Markus Barchfeld for his work on RDT's debugger and
builds; Jason Morrison for his work on type inferrencing; Mirko
Stocker, Thomas Corbat, and Lukas Felber for their addition of
refactoring support; Adam Williams for starting the RDT
project; Paul Colton and Aptana for allowing me to work on
RadRails full-time.
Lastly, I'd like to thank my wonderful wife, Lidza, for being patient
and sharing a passion for our careers; and my dog Beaker for
knowing when I need to take a walk.
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Getting Started 7
Do I Need an IDE for Rails Development? 7
About Aptana RadRails 9
How Can Aptana RadRails Help Me? 10
Prerequisites 11
Java Virtual Machine 11
Ruby and Rails 12
Components to Install 13
Installing Rails if you already have Ruby and RubyGems 13
Installing Ruby and Rails on Linux 15
Installing Ruby and Rails on OS X 16
Installing Ruby and Rails on Windows 17
Supported Databases 17
Installing Eclipse 18
Installing Plugins in Eclipse 20
RadRails Installation 21
Summary 25
Chapter 2: First Steps 27
Basic Configuration 27
Eclipse Preferences Dialog 27
File Encoding 30
Connecting through a Proxy 30
Ruby Environment 32
Rails Environment 33
Creating a Rails Project 34
Importing an Existing Project into RadRails 37
Working with Perspectives and Views 38
Eclipse Perspectives 38
Table of Contents
Eclipse Views 39
Summary 43
Chapter 3: Your First Application 45
Basic Views 45
The Ruby Explorer View 46
Ruby Explorer Top Icons 50
The Console View 51
The Generators View 53
Generating Models and Migrations 55
Running Your Migrations 56
Generating Scaffolds 58
Starting Your Server 60
Monitoring Your Server 63
Summary 65
Chapter 4: Writing Ruby Code 67
A Quick Note about Keyboard Shortcuts 67
The Ruby Editor 68
Syntax Highlighting 69
Outlining the Structure of Your Ruby Code 70
Quick Outline 71
Type Hierarchy 75
General Outline View 77
Code Folding 78
Code Formatting 80
Indenting Code Blocks 82
Commenting Code Blocks 82
Code Completion 82
Code Templates 85
Defining Your Own Code Templates 87
Navigating Your Code 89
General Source Navigation Tools 89
Matching Brackets 89
Declarations of Classes, Modules, Methods, and Variables 90
Navigating Your MVC Code 91
Opening Types and Resources 92
Refactoring 94
Generate Accessors 95
Generate Constructors 96
Convert Local Variable to Field 96
Encapsulate Field 96
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
Extract Method 96
Extract Constant 98
Inline Method 98
Rename 98
Split Local Variable 99
Searching in Ruby Projects 100
Searching within the Current File 100
Searching across Multiple Files 101
Ruby Search 104
Call Hierarchy 105
Summary 106
Chapter 5: Coding Rails Views 107
ERB/RHTML Templates 107
Views Navigation 108
View Templates 110
HTML Code Assist 112
Refactoring into Partials 113
Outline 114
Editing HTML Files 115
Editing JavaScript Files 115
Editing CSS Files 118
Summary 121
Chapter 6: Debugging Your Application 123
Getting Started with Debugging 124
Debugger Configuration 124
Starting Your Server 126
Debugging a Ruby Script 126
Using Breakpoints 127
The Breakpoints View 130
Setting Generic Breakpoints for Exceptions 131
Exporting and Importing Breakpoints 133
The Debug View 134
The Debug View and the Stack Frame 134
Stepping through Your Application 136
Variables and Expressions 139
The Variables View 139
The Expressions View 142
The Display View 144
Useful Tools for Debugging 146
Linking Errors and Source Code from the Browser 146
[ iii ]
