Create A Rails App With Passenger Phusion On Mac OS X Leopard

This article guides you through the process of creating a Ruby on Rails application using Passenger Phusion (mod_rails) on a Mac OS X Leopard. The article assumes that both Rails and MySQL have already been installed.

Here are the 11 steps to get a Passenger Phusion based Rails app going:

Step 1 - Stop Apache

System Preferences >> Sharing

Uncheck Web Sharing

Step 2 - Install Passenger Gem

$ gem install passenger

Step 3 - Install Apache Module

$ passenger-install-apache2-module

Step 4 - Apache Config Edits

edit /etc/apache2/httpd-conf and add the following three lines:

LoadModule passenger_module /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6
PassengerRuby /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby


Step 5 - Create Virtual Host

This step allows us to access a local Wordpress blog from http://wp.local

Edit /etc/hosts and add the following line:
127.0.0.1 railstestapp.local

Edit /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@railstestapp.local
DocumentRoot "/Users/user/Sites/railstestapp/public"
RailsEnv development
ServerName railstestapp.local
ServerAlias *.railstestapp.local
ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/railstestapp.local-error_log"
CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/railstestapp.local-access_log" common
</VirtualHost>


The RailsEnv development line is required to run the Rails app in development mode. Also, note that the document root is the public directory.

Step 6- Start Apache

System Preferences >> Sharing

Uncheck Web Sharing

Step 7 - Create a Rails App


$cd /Users/user/Sites
$rails railstestapp


Step 8 - Connect Rails With MySQL Database

Edit your database.yml file in your Rails app so it looks like this:


development:
adapter: mysql
database: railstestapp_development
username: root
password: password
socket: /tmp/mysql.sock

Step 9 - Create the Database


rake db:create


Step 10 - Create Model/Controller/View


ruby script/generate scaffold Post title:string body:string


Step 11 - Try It


http://railstestapp.local/posts


References

The following article gave me the clue on how to set the Rails app in development mode:
http://benr75.com/2008/04/12/setup-mod_rails-phusion-mac-os-x-leopard

Installing Passenger Phusion instructions at: http://www.modrails.com/install.html