Rails For Legacy Apps

Patrick Crowley

Rails for Legacy Apps

(How to use Rails with existing apps)

• New ideas

•New ideas • No users

•New ideas • No users • Zero code investment

•New ideas • No users • Zero code investment • Best case scenario

But, in the real world...

• Legacy content

•Legacy content • Existing userbase

•Legacy content • Existing userbase • Front end (HTML + CSS)

•Legacy content • Existing userbase • Front end (HTML + CSS) • Database Schema

Q: How can I use Rails with a legacy app?

• Don’t! (Leave site as is)

• Don’t! (Leave site as is) • Reboot site with Rails

• Don’t! (Leave site as is) • Reboot site with Rails • Or, maybe...

Use Rails as a control panel to run your site

Case study: Cinema Treasures

Front-end Smarty Blogs Theater DB pMachine PHP/MySQL

How did we edit theaters?

phpMyAdmin (sadly)

• Intended for developers

• Intended for developers • Easy to harm database

• Intended for developers • Easy to harm database • Doesn’t scale

Why not roll your own?

• Not highest priority

•Not highest priority • Busy with other things

•Not highest priority • Busy with other things • I never want to write PHP again.

Let’s do it in Rails!

Basic concept

Current site Database

Current site Rails Database

Issues I ran into

• Non-plural table names

• Non-plural table names • Had to remove primary id’s on join tables

• Non-plural table names • Had to remove primary id’s on join tables • Needed a way to delete cached templates on db update

How long did this take?

1 week / 2 - 3 hours per day

The End

New Theaters 6,000 4,500 3,000 1,500 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

New Comments 50,000 37,500 25,000 12,500 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Rails For Legacy Apps

by Patrick Crowley on Jun 16, 2008

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