Ruby MySQL Module Installation and Setup

Introduction

This document describes the steps required on Solaris for connecting to MySQL database using MySQL-Ruby.

Prerequisite

MySQL driver integration needs MySQL C client API header files and libraries. This is available only through the source code distribution.  Please refer to my blog entry "How to Build MySQL source code on Solaris".

Ruby Version Requirement

Ruby 1.8.2-1.8.7, 1.9.0

# ruby -version

ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [sparc-solaris2.11]

Download Ruby MySQL Module

Go to this site http://www.tmtm.org/en/mysql/ruby/

Under download section, select mysql-ruby-2.8.tar.gz .

MySQL-Ruby Installation

#pwd
/export/home/mysql
#gzip -d mysql-ruby-2.8.tar.gz
#tar xvf  mysql-ruby-2.8
#cd mysql-ruby-2.8

Configure, Build and Install

After unpacking the distribution, change the location into its top-level directory and configure it using the extconf.rb script in that directory.

# pwd

    /export/home/mysql/mysql-ruby-2.8
   # ruby extconf.rb

If extconf.rb successfully locates your MySQL header file and library directories, you can proceed to build and install the module. Otherwise, it indicates what it could not find, and you'll need to run the command again with additional options that specify the appropriate directory locations. For example, if your header file and library directories are /usr/local/mysql/include/mysql and /usr/local/mysql/include/lib, the configuration command looks like this:

   # ruby extconf.rb \
       --with-mysql-include=/usr/local/mysql/include/mysql \
       --with-mysql-lib=/usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql

Alternatively, tell extconf.rb where to find the mysql_config program. In that case, extconf.rb runs mysql_config to locate the header and library files:

   # ruby extconf.rb --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

In my installation, I have used the following..

   #ruby extconf.rb  --with-mysql-include=/usr/local/mysql/include/mysql –with-mysql-lib=/usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql

checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... yes
checking for mysql_ssl_set()... yes
checking for rb_str_set_len()... no
checking for mysql.h... no
checking for mysql/mysql.h... yes
creating Makefile

After configuring the distribution, build and install the module:

   % make
   % make install

Create simple.rb script

Add the following contents to file simple.rb and save it.

#!/usr/bin/ruby -w

# simple.rb - simple MySQL script using Ruby MySQL module

require "mysql"

begin

# connect to the MySQL server

dbh = Mysql.real_connect("localhost", "testuser", "testpass", "test")

# get server version string and display it

puts "Server version: " + dbh.get_server_info

rescue Mysql::Error => e

puts "Error code: #{e.errno}"

puts "Error message: #{e.error}"

puts "Error SQLSTATE: #{e.sqlstate}" if e.respond_to?("sqlstate")

ensure

# disconnect from server

dbh.close if dbh

end

Execute the script to get the MySQL version

# ruby simple.rb
Server version: 5.1.30
#

References

Supported Drivers, Docs, Discussion forms:

http://www.sun.com/software/products/mysql/drivers.jsp

Articles for installing the drivers:

http://www.kitebird.com/articles/

The Ruby home page provides general information about Ruby itself:

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

Posted at 11:48AM Jan 05, 2009 by Arathi Krishnaiyengar in MySQL  |  Comments[0]