If you have problems with SSH session timing out, add the following to your /etc/.ssh/config:

Host *
  ServerAliveInterval 55
  ServerAliveCountMax 2

Capybara's has_css? matcher has a couple of options you might find useful.

Check that a selector appears a given number of times

Use the :count option like this:

Then /^I should see (\d+) users?$/ do |count|
  page.should have_css('ul#users li', :count => count.to_i)
end

Check that a selector has a given text content

Use the :text option like this:

Then /^I should see a user with name "([^\"]*)"$/ do |nam...

Even when you're using bundler, it might be significant in which order your gems are listed in your Gemfile. This can happen when gems are running around calling require or require_dependency on other gems or application classes when loaded (don't do that!).

A known culprit of this is the (otherwise wonderful) resource_controller gem, which requires ApplicationController when loaded. When your ApplicationController requires later-loaded gems when loaded, Rails will not boot.

He...

It can be useful to have a Ruby expression like condition ? positive_case : negative_case in MySQL queries:

UPDATE users SET monthly_debit = IF(subscriber, 19, 0)

A good tool to generate strong passwords and secrets is "apg". You can get it with

sudo apt-get install apg

To create a strong secret for sessions, hashed Paperclip paths, etc. say

apg -m128 -a1 -E\'\"

Arguments explained:

• The -m parameter defines the secret length
• -a1 makes apg choose from all 7-bit ASCII characters instead of just the alphabet
• -E\'\" excludes quote characters so you can easily paste the secret into a Ru...

Inside before :each blocks you can refer to variables that you introduce via let later on.

They do not need to be defined ahead of your before block and can be different for individual sections.

It works just like that:

describe User do
  describe '#locked?' do
    
    before :each do
      subject.should_receive(:current_plan).and_return plan
    end
    
    context 'when expiring today' do
      let(:plan) { stub(:expiry => Date.today) }
      it 'should be false' do
        subject....

You need to install the following packages before you can build the Paperclip gem:

sudo apt-get install imagemagick librmagick-ruby

If you have several submit elements (inputs or buttons with type="submit") that each cause different things to happen (e.g. you might have a button that sends an extra attribute) you might run into trouble when submitting the form by pressing the return key in a field.

When nothing fancy like a tabindex is defined it seems as if the first submit element inside a form is chosen (and has its attributes submitted) when pressing return.\
So, if possible, put your "default" (aka least harmful) submit element before others.

NB: If you s...

If you need to call a state_machine event and do not want to re-define resource_controller's create method, try this:

create.before do
  object.state_event = :launch_spaceship
end

If a SSH shell dies (from timeout for example), you cannot kill it with the usual CTRL-C or CTRL-Z. Instead, press
[ENTER]~.
(That is ENTER TILDE PERIOD).

Note that you should disable the Java plug-in in your browsers after installation.

Ubuntu >= 12.04

Java 11

sudo apt install openjdk-11-jre-headless

Java 10

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxuprising/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java10-installer

Java 8

You probably want to get rid of OpenJDK (which is installed by default and leads to bad RubyMine performance):

...

Both these approaches will keep your GET parameters -- and will only work for GET requests.

• Capybara:

  When /^I reload the page$/ do
    visit [ current_path, page.driver.request.env['QUERY_STRING'] ].reject(&:blank?).join('?')
  end
  

• Webrat:

  When /^I reload the page$/ do
    visit url_for(request.params)
  end
  

For a step that distinguishes between drivers (Selenium, Rack::Test, Culerity), check [n4k3d.com](http://n4k3d.com/blog/2011/02/02/reloading-the-page-in-cucumber-with-capybara-and-seleniu...

RSpec's context (which is basically an alias for describe) takes over your whole application. No object may have its own context method, or you will always receive errors like

"No description supplied for example group declared on ~/project/app/..."

The easiest workarounds:

• do not name any method context
• use describe instead of context in your specs, and put this into your spec_helper.rb:\
  Spec::DSL::Main.class_eval do
  if method_defined? :context
  undef :context
  end
  end

1. In /etc/crontab
2. In /etc/cron.d/*
3. In /etc/cron.hourly/*
4. In /etc/cron.daily/*
5. In /etc/cron.weekly/*
6. In /etc/cron.monthly/*
7. In the personal crontab of any user. This is a magic file you can view with crontab -l and edit with crontab -e. You'll need to su to the respective user to view or edit her crontab.

When you need to delete rows from a table, and the delete conditions require a joined table, MySQL needs to know which table you want to delete from.

Let's say that Post belongs_to :author. In order to delete all posts from the author named "Eric", write

DELETE posts FROM posts LEFT JOIN authors ON posts.author_id = authors.id WHERE authors.name = 'Eric'

Notice the additional "posts" between DELETE and FROM.

Rails 2

You can use

record.send(:update_without_callbacks)

or

record.send(:create_without_callbacks)

This can be used as a lightweight alternative to machinist's make or FactoryGirl's create, when you just need objects in the database but don't care about any callbacks or validations. Note that create_without_callbacks does not return the object, so you might want to do

record = Record.new.tap(&:create_without_callbacks)

Rails 3

Rails 3 no longer comes with update_without_callbacks or `crea...

We use RTeX for PDF exports.
While converting LaTeX to PDF, RTeX opens a temporary file which has problematic permissions: Both group and world can read those files.

Although the temp files should go away they sometimes live longer than one would expect.
We patched RTeX to fix this (and have more secure permissions). Place the code below into config/initializers/rtex.rb