When you are developing an app or a website for your client, it is pretty common to setup a sandbox environment where your client can test and see the application while it is still in development. One thing I find useful is to display the last deployment date on the home page.

Here is a quick and easy way to automate the process :

Step #1 (we can have lots of fun)
I will consider that you use capistrano for deploying your app. The only thing you have to do in your capistrano recipe is to “touch” a dummy file to update its modification date.

namespace :deploy do
  desc 'Restart My App'
  task :restart, :roles => :app do
    run "touch #{current_path}/last_deploy"
  end
end

Step #2 (there’s so much we can do)
Now in application_controller, add a before_filter like this

before_filter :last_deploy

def last_deploy
  @last_deploy = File.new("last_deploy").atime rescue Time.now
end

Step #3 (it’s just you and me)
Display the date in the layout or in the view of your choice

<%= "Last deployment : #{@last_deploy}"%>

Edit : Oh, dear readers, I just want to let you know that RubyFleebie is now on Twitter.