Easy access to Ruby on Rails development with radrails and eclipse

Ruby on Rails is in the ascendant. As it has become popular, developers are increasingly desperate for an integrated development environment (IDE) to make Rails easier to use. Radrails is an Eclipse based environment that can meet the requirements of most developers.

This article describes the Radrails IDE and assumes you already know how to develop a WEB application with Ruby on Rails, so this article will not take time to explain the Ruby or rails code, but will mainly explain the IDE itself.

Download and install Radrails

You want to be trendy with Ruby on Rails, but you're not ready to give up the very handy IDE, or you might have been working with Rails for a while, but now you want to reuse the same editor you used to be. Whatever the reason is prompting you to use radrails, the good news is that radrails is easy to install and use. This section first describes how to install Radrails, and then describes how to use Radrails.

There are no prerequisites for using radrails. It can run on any microsoft®windows®, linux®, or Mac OS X system with Ruby V1.8.4, Rails V1.1 (or later), and java™v1.4 (or later).

If your system meets these requirements, obtain a radrails copy from the project's Web site. You can also find links to eclipse plug-ins that are used to run radrails within existing Eclipse installations and code. Note: How to use these distributions is not covered in this article.

After downloading the appropriate zip file, simply unzip it and run the Radrails executable file. You may need to adjust the $PATH to ensure that radrails can find the installed Java.

Start and use Radrails

Once you have installed Radrails, you are ready to start using. This section provides a quick introduction to the Radrails application and describes how to navigate through the project and the information for each purpose. There are two ways to start a project, including starting a new project and importing an existing project.

Whichever method you choose to use, the beginning is the most important. The best way to learn radrails is to contact and use it. But before you do, take a look at the quick guide below.

Radrails applications

Let's take a look at the Radrails application that contains one project to learn how to add a project quickly.

Figure 1 shows the Radrails application. In fact, it shows the Rails "perspective" application, but don't worry about this little problem. You can think of it as a six-area window: Menu bar, toolbar, browser and test::unit pane, Editor pane, overview pane, and External tool pane.

Figure 1. Radrails applications

The menu bar menu bar is at the top level of the application window. It works just like the menu bar in other applications. There is an important menu item, Window > Preferences, that allows you to set or select a Ruby resolver. If you do not set or choose, you will fail (for example, a unit test script) When you try to run most of the script Rails that you create. The toolbar toolbar is just below the menu bar. Also, it works like other toolbars. The leftmost button is the New button. The browser and the Test::unit pane browser and the Test::unit pane are located on the left side of the application window. This article will briefly discuss how to explore the information within the project and the various purposes. Use the Test::unit section to monitor unit Test status. The Editor pane Editor pane is located in the center of the application window. This editor is an excellent editing tool that provides syntax separations, indentation, and other tools. Right-clicking in the editor opens a menu with many other tools, including the options for debugging, the mechanism to run the code in the file, the annotation to the selected area, and the cancellation of comments. The Summary Pane Overview pane is located on the right side of the application window. This pane provides a summary view of the source files that are currently being edited. This view allows you to quickly browse the methods and classes within the file. The External tool pane External tool pane is located at the bottom right of the application window. This pane provides tabs that provide access to Web server controls, builders, REGEXP tools, and other tools.