September 10, 2006

Grafting Rails on to an existing website: Introduction and TOC

RoR has been hyped--and rightly so--as hitting the sweet spot for greenfield development. That is, when you're starting a fresh project, and can commit to configuring everything--from web server to database schema to deployment strategy--to Rails' liking. True enough. But many of us are not working with a blank slate. We have to deal with existing servers and databases. New projects need to be integrated into existing websites and interop with legacy systems. What then? Is Rails still a good choice?

To explore this question, I'm going to recount some of the strategies I've used in deploying Rails applications into an existing website.

First, some caveats:


  • We're a decent-sized non-profit, with a total web team of four people. This isn't necessarily the "enterprise" (whatever that means), so my experiences may or may not map well to your situation.

  • The strategies I've described are not necessarily best practices. But, they do work (and are working). I'd encourage any tips about ways to improve this: weblog@karlnelson.net.

I'll use this post as the table of contents, and update it as I add new entries.

Table of Contents: