Rails notebook

Welcome to Rails Notebook! Rails Notebook is a web-based notebook environment for interactive computing, specifically geared for Ruby on Rails. It currently consists of several visualization tools for database queries and a performance analysis flame chart.

User Installation Guide

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'rails_notebook'

And then execute the following from the root of your Rails application:

$ bundle
$ bundle update

Please ensure that the following dependencies are installed prior to running the Rails Notebook.

ipython 3.0.0 or above, ruby 2.2.1 or above
Python 2.7.11 (Rails Notebook is not compatible with Python 3)

To start the notebook navigate to the root of the Rails application (if not already) and run:

rake rails_notebook

When running the notebook for the first time, the notebook required to be marked as "Trusted" under File > Trusted Notebook. You may be prompted to restart the notebook.

Some useful commands:

To display the application's routes:

Rails.application.routes

To view an ER diagram of the current database:

ActiveRecord::Base.connection.tables

To query the top 10 records of a table (default limits to 10):

table_name.all

To graph a database group_by query into a bar chart:

SchemaTable::bar_chart(Model.group(:column_name))

Developer Installation Guide

Follow the instructions in the following link to get rvm and ruby installed: https://rvm.io/rvm/install . The rails notebook is only compatible with Ruby 2.2.1 and above. Once rvm is installed, run:

rvm install ruby 2.2.1

Ensure that rvm is using the correct ruby version by running:

ruby --version 
-> 2.2.1p85

If this is the incorrect version, run:

rvm use ruby 2.2.1

Next, navigate to https://repo.continuum.io/archive/index.html, and download Anaconda 2.4.1. Ensure that "Anaconda2" is precedes the file name (for Python 2.7)

e.g., for MacOSX: Anaconda2-2.4.1-MacOSX-x86_64.sh (PYTHON 2.7 NB)

To install Anaconda, navigate to the directory with the downloaded .sh file and run:

bash Anaconda2-2.4.1-MacOSX-x86_64.sh

Make sure the directory, ~/Library/Jupyter/kernels is empty. If it exists, make sure this is removed before running the Rails Notebook.

Next, ensure that Anaconda is added to your PATH variable by adding the following line to your ~/.bash_profile:

export PATH="/Path/To/../anaconda2/bin:$PATH"

Restart the terminal before proceeding.

Validating your environment

To ensure that the correct dependencies have been installed, run the following:

which anaconda 
-> /Path/To/../bin/anaconda
which python 
-> /Path/To/../anaconda/bin/python
python --version 
-> 2.7.11, Anaconda 2.4.1

If the above are incorrect, you likely need to update your PATH variable in your ~/.bash_profile to point towards the correct Python installation, and thereafter restart the terminal before continuing.

Almost there:

Next, clone the Rails_notebook repository by running:

git clone https://github.com/Intellection/rails_notebook.git /Path/To/../rails_notebook
cd /Path/To/../rails_notebook

Install the required gems (this may take some time):

gem install bundler
bundle install
bundle update

Open lib/rails_notebook/command.rb with your editor and uncomment (line 32):

# create_static_symlink!

Save and exit.

Test your installation

The repository comes with an example Rails application. To test the Rails Notebook, change to the test_app directory located under spec/test_app and run:

rake db:reset db:seed
rake rails_notebook

Open the railsNotebook.ipynb notebook. Upon the first time running the notebook select "Trust Notebook" via:

File > Trust Notebook

Then restart the notebook via the Terminal (CTRL+C twice to stop the kernel)

Finally, rerun the notebook again using:

rake rails_notebook

Some useful commands:

To display the Rails application's routes:

Rails.application.routes

To view an ER diagram of the current database:

ActiveRecord::Base.connection.tables

To query the top 10 records of a table (default limits to 10):

Customer.all

To graph a database group_by query into a bar chart:

SchemaTable::bar_chart(Order.group(:status))

Why does Rails_notebook exist?

The Rails Notebook is a web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and explanatory text.

Core aims of Rails_notebook

Visualization of:

1. Database queries

2. Database Schema

3. Flame charts

4. Routes

5. Barcharts

... and more to come.

Contributors

@Brendon, @Nick, @Tsu-Shiuan

License

See LICENSE