Undocumented :inverse_of option for ActiveRecord associations
You can now add an :inverse_of option to has_one, has_many and belongs_to associations.... Without :inverse_of m and f.man would be different instances of the same object (f.man being pulled from the database again). With these new :inverse_of options m and f.man are the same in memory instance.
Enable or disable Gnome desktop icons
When doing a presentation you may want to hide your desktop icons.
You can switch them off (or back on) like this:
- Open up
gconf-editor
- Navigate to apps -> nautilus -> preferences
- (Un)check "show_desktop"
Fix LoadError with Rails 3 applications on Passenger
After switching to Rails 3 you may get a LoadError
with the following message when trying to use your application via passenger:
no such file to load -- dispatcher
Your Passenger version is most likely out of date.
Update the gem, then install the apache module again:
sudo gem install passenger
sudo passenger-install-apache2-module
Follow any instructions. Update your /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
with the lines given at the end of the installation process to use the version you just installed.
Passenger ignores RailsEnv directive for Rails 3 applications
You might find that your Passenger ignores all RailsSomething
directives in the vhost for your new Rails 3 application. The culprit is a file config.ru
which makes Passenger consider your application a Rack (non-Rails) application.
To fix this you can either use RackEnv
in lieu of RailsEnv
(it works fine) or delete the config.ru
. Unless you have a good reason to do so, go with RackEnv
.
Migrating to RSpec 2 from RSpec 1
You will need to upgrade to RSpec >= 2 and rspec-rails >= 2 for Rails 3. Here are some hints to get started:
- In RSpec 2 the executable is
rspec
, notspec
. - RSpec and rspec-rails have been completely refactored internally. All RSpec classes have been renamed from
Spec::Something
toRSpec::Something
. This also means that everyrequire 'spec/something'
must now berequire 'rspec/something'
. - In
spec_helper.rb
,Spec::Runner.configure
becomesRSpec.configure
- It has become really hard to extend specific example groups ...
Take care when merging with params
Be careful when using params.merge
as params
is a HashWithIndifferentAccess.
Why?
Usually this should not be an issue but it turns crazy if you try to include associated models deeper than 1 level:
options = params.merge(:include => { :user => :avatar })
Post.paginate options
When inspecting the merged params you will get something like this:
{ :include=> { "user" => :avatar }, :page => 23 }
Here the :user
symbol in the hash of inclusions turned into a "user"
...
Use form_for without the enclosing form tag
In rare cases you might need something like form_for
(for using form builder methods on the resulting block element) but without the surrounding form. One such case would be updating some of a form's fields via XHR.
You can simply use Rails' fields_for
to do things like this in your views (HAML here):
- fields_for @user do |form|
= form.label :email, 'E-Mail'
= form.text_field :email
You will only receive the form content you gave, no hidden inputs incl...
Shell script to quickly switch Apache sites
I prefer the application that I'm currently working on to be reachable at http://localhost/
.
So when I switch to another project, I use this handy shell script to set one site as the current one. Call it just like this:
apache-site makandra-com
Note that it disables all other sites in your Apache configuration so you would not want to use this on production machines.
Furthermore it will also enable the default
site if that was available.
When you call apache-site
with no arguments, it will list all available sites.
...
On memoizing methods that return a scope
Be careful when memoizing a method that returns a scope, e.g.:
def variants
scoped(:conditions => { :name => name })
end
memoize :variants
Because of the way memoize
is implemented, that method now no longer returns a scope but its loaded target array.
The best solution is to use the Memoizer gem instead.
A workaround is to roll your own memoization:
def variants
@va...
Generate a path or URL string from an array of route components
When using form_for
you can give the form's target URL either as a string or an array:
form_for(admin_user_path(@user)) do ... end
# same as:
form_for([:admin, @user]) do ... end
Same for link_to:
link_to("Label", edit_admin_user_path(@user))
# same as
link_to("Label", [:edit, :admin, @user])
polymorphic_path
and polymorphic_url
If you would like to generate a path or URL string from an array of route components just as form_for
does, you can use polymorphic_path
or polymorphic_url
:
polymorphic...
Adding a Timepicker to jQuery UI Datepicker
The timepicker addon adds a timepicker to jQuery UI Datepicker, thus the datepicker (jQueryUI) is required for using any of these. In addition all datepicker options are still available through the timepicker addon.
Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
I’m going to list assumptions your systems probably make about names. All of these assumptions are wrong. Try to make less of them next time you write a system which touches names.
Getting your e-mails back after upgrading Thunderbird to version 3
If you previously used version 2.x of Thunderbird and upgraded to 3.x (for example through an Ubuntu release upgrade) you might notice that Thunderbird will not show any of your old e-mails or settings.
This results from a different directory being used for storing profiles and configuration.
You can replace the blank profile with your old one like this:
cd ~
mv .thunderbird .thunderbird-invalid
cp -R .mozilla-thunderbird .thunderbird
Upon its next start, Thunderbird brings up the migration wizard introducing you to a few vers...
Working around the ancestry gem's way of object destruction
The ancestry gem allows you to easily use tree structures in your Rails application.
There is one somewhat unobvious pitfall to it: its way of applying the orphan_strategy
which defines how it handles children of an object going to be destroyed.
What's this all about?
In many cases you might want to disallow destruction if there are any child nodes present. The restrict
strategy does the trick but raises an exception when destroy
is called:
has_ancestry :orphan_st...
Inspecting model callback chains
If you need to look at the list of methods that are called upon certain events (like before/after saving etc), do this:
Model._save_callbacks.select {|cb| cb.kind == :before}.map{ |c| c.instance_variable_get :@filter }
Rails 2
User.after_save_callback_chain
To look at the method names only, you could do something like that:
User.after_save_callback_chain.collect(&:method)
Find the newest file from shell
This can be helpful when you need the latest file inside a directory for processing in a shell script:
ls -1tr * | tail -1
Used switches
The -1
switch makes ls
return 1 file per line, -t
orders by modification time and -r
causes sorting from oldest to newest. tail -1
then returns the last line, containing the newest file's name.
If you require only a subset of files, adjust the "*
" mask accordingly or use other switches of ls
.
Force RubyMine to notice file system changes
If you did file operations inside a shell or for example using Nautilus, it can take quite a while until RubyMine takes note of them and updates things like your project tree or its internal file list.
Flushing file system buffers helps you out (run it from a terminal):
sync
This is also possibly via the RubyMine menus: File → Synchronize.
Setting nil values in Machinist blueprints
Take care when trying to set attributes to nil
in a blueprint.
Given the following master blueprint:
Story.blueprint do
title
author { User.make }
editor { User.make }
end
This approach will not overwrite/remove the editor
defined in the master blueprint:
Story.blueprint(:draft) do
editor nil
end
...whereas this one will (note the lambda):
Story.blueprint(:draft) do
editor { nil }
end
Dealing with ActiveRecord::RecordNotSaved
If you get an ActiveRecord::RecordNotSaved
error, a method inside one of your model's callback chains (before_save
etc) possibly returned false.
This commonly happens when you have a method setting attributes and the last one is a boolean set to false (as the value of the last statement is returned). Fix this by simply calling true
at the end of such methods:
def hide
self.visible = false
true
end
Note that nil
won't cause this behavior. Thus, you can use an if
without problems -- if you are not returning fal...
Here’s what we’ve learned about doing UI for mobile web apps with WebKit
Lately, we’ve been exploring ways to offer web apps that perform like native apps on mobile devices. For this short sprint we targeted mobile WebKit browsers—especially the default browsers on iOS and Android—because of their widespread use and excellent support for HTML5 and CSS3. Here are a few things we’ve learned along the way.
Match strings in a given order with Cucumber and Capybara
Sometimes the order in which strings appear on a page matters to you.
Spreewald gives you steps like these:
Then I should see in this order:
| Alpha Group |
| Augsburg |
| Berlin |
| Beta Group |
Or, if you prefer multiline strings:
Then I should see in this order:
"""
Alpha Group
Augsburg
Berlin
Beta Group
"""
The step ignores all HTML tags and only tests on plain text.
Preload tags with acts-as-taggable-on
When you do tags with acts-as-taggable-on and want to preload associated tags, you can do so with
TaggedModel.scoped(:include => :tag)
Note however that this will only prevent tagged_model.tags
from hitting the database. Using tagged_model.tag_list
does not use the preloaded association.
Solve ActiveRecord::MissingAttributeError "missing attribute: foo"
Did you use the :select
option in a find
, and forgot to include foo
?