Installing RhoConnect

This section discusses how to install the development environment for RhoConnect. For those who have developed a RhoConnect application, and now wish to deploy that RhoConnect application on a server, refer to the instructions for deploying a RhoConnect application, such as preparing a RhoConnect app for production and deploying a RhoConnect application.

• Installing RhoConnect with RhoStudio
• Installing RhoConnect on Linux
• Setting the HTTP_PROXY Environment Variable
• Upgrading an Existing Application
• Upgrading previous versions to RhoConnect 3.4+

Installing RhoConnect with RhoStudio

To install RhoConnect on a Windows or Macintosh platform, install RhoMobile Suite. The RhoMobile Suite installer installs Rho products, such as Rhodes, RhoConnect, RhoElements, and RhoStudio. RhoStudio is an Eclipse installation that facilitates development of native smartphone applications.

Click here for the RhoMobile Suite installation instructions.

When you start RhoStudio, you set the location of the workspace directory. Set this path to a workspace directory that does not contain space symbols: if the path has spaces, a RhoConnect application created with RhoStudio will not work properly.

Installing RhoConnect on Linux

On Linux, you need the following setup before redis is installed.

• The /usr/local directory exists and is recursively writable by the current user.
• The /usr/local/etc/ directory exists and is recursively writable by the current user.
• You need a gcc toolchain installed, i.e. via build-essential package on Ubuntu/Debian.

To install RhoConnect on Linux, you need to install the RhoConnect gem. Download and install:

1. Ruby v1.9.3.

2. Ruby Web Server - We tested with thin, and passenger. WEBrick, the web server that ships with ruby, is known to cause issues with HTTP headers/cookies and is not recommended.

3. Redis - RhoConnect includes a simple rhoconnect task rhoconnect redis-install to install redis, covered in the Rhoconnect CLI section. Alternatively, you can install redis directly.

4. Install the RhoConnect Gem.

Run this command to install the RhoConnect Gem.

$ gem install rhoconnect

Setting the HTTP_PROXY Environment Variable

If you are using RestClient, you should set the HTTP_PROXY environment variable to your proxy server URL. This allows the bundler to work from behind a proxy.

From Linux or OSX, you can use the following command.

$ export http_proxy=http://{username}:{password}@{proxy-server-name}

From Windows:

$ SET HTTP_PROXY=http://{username}:{password}@{proxy-server-name}

This allows you to set the RestClient proxy using the HTTP_PROXY environment variable in your RhoConnect code.

RestClient.proxy = ENV['http_proxy']

Upgrading an Existing Application

If you have an existing application, upgrading to the latest version of RhoConnect is simple.

Open the Gemfile of your application and find the rhoconnect line, it should look something like:

gem 'rhoconnect', '3.3.6'

Change this to the latest release version, which you can find on rubygems.org, for example if it is 3.4.0:

gem 'rhoconnect', '3.4.0'

Run the following command from the root application directory:

$ bundle install

Now update your application’s RhoConnect dependency manifest:

$ rhoconnect update

Upgrading previous versions to RhoConnect 3.4+

If you have an existing RhoConnect application using version < 3.4 and want to upgrade it to RhoConnect 3.4+, then you need to update the Gemfile file to properly use the latest RhoConnect runtime dependencies.

First, follow the instructions described in the previous section.

Next, make sure your Gemfile looks like the following example, replacing the version as necessary. The rhoconnect update command will generate a reference Gemfile.new which you can use to replace your Gemfile:

source 'http://rubygems.org'

gem 'rhoconnect', '<put correct version here>'
gemfile_path = File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), ".rcgemfile")

begin
    eval(IO.read(gemfile_path))
rescue Exception => e
    puts "ERROR: Couldn't read RhoConnect .rcgemfile"
    puts e.message
    exit 1
end

# DON'T FORGET to add your application specific gems after this line ...
# ...

You must update config.ru and Rakefile files to match RhoConnect 3.4+ gem requirements.

Replace your existing config.ru with the listing below. Save your old config.ru since you will use values within it in the new config.ru.

# config.ru file

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'rhoconnect/application/init'

# secret is generated along with the app
# NOTE:
# Substitute 'REPLACE_ME' string by the Rhoconnect::Server.set :secret value from your old config.ru    
Rhoconnect::Server.set     :secret, 'REPLACE_ME'

# !!! Add your custom initializers and overrides here !!!
# For example, uncomment the following line to enable Stats
#Rhoconnect::Server.enable  :stats
# uncomment the following line to disable Resque Front-end console
#Rhoconnect.disable_resque_console = true
# uncomment the following line to disable Rhoconnect Front-end console
#Rhoconnect.disable_rc_console = true

# Load RhoConnect application
require './application'


# run RhoConnect Application
run Rhoconnect.app  

And replace your existing Rakefile with the following:

require 'rubygems'
require 'bundler/setup'
require 'rhoconnect/tasks'
require 'rhoconnect'
require 'resque/tasks'

ROOT_PATH = File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__))

task 'resque:setup' do
  # The number of redis connections you want a job to have
  Rhoconnect.connection_pool_size = 1
  require './application'

  Resque.after_fork do
    Store.reconnect
  end
end  

Finally, run bundle install to install any missing dependencies in your RhoConnect directory:

$ bundle install