Popular mistakes when using nested forms

Here are some popular mistakes when using nested forms:

  • You are using fields_for instead of form.fields_for.
  • You forgot to use accepts_nested_attributes in the containing model. Rails won't complain, but nothing will work. In particular, nested_form.object will be nil.
  • The :reject_if option lambda in your accepts_nested_attributes call is defined incorrectly. Raise the attributes hash given to your :reject_if lambda to see if it looks like you expect.
  • If you are nesting forms into nested forms, each model involved ne...

Test-Led Development: writing code between integration and unit tests

Test-Led Development is a flavour of Test Driven Development that focuses on productivity. This guide shows how it works, using Cucumber and RSpec as integration and unit test frameworks.

Hierarchical approach

Test-Led Development is a process with three abstraction levels:

  • Integration test
  • Code
  • Unit level

During development you are frequently changing levels. It may look something like this:

Integration _                    ___
Code         \____    _____   __/   \__ ...
Unit test         \__/     \_/

Integration...

Modern CSS supports individual transform properties

tl;dr

Individual transform properties are great because they allow you to write more readable and maintainable CSS, especially when applying multiple transformations and/or when animating transforms.

For ages, CSS transforms had to be defined using the transform property. For a single transformation, this was something like transform: scale(1.5), and multiple transformations could be applied by chaining them.

.example {
  transform: scale(1.5) rotate(45deg) translateY(-50%);
}

All modern browsers (Chrome & Edge ...

ASDF: A Version Manager To Rule Them All

tl;dr

asdf allows you to manage multiple runtime versions with a single CLI tool and is backwards compatible by supporting existing config files, like e.g. .nvmrc or .ruby-version.

Getting Started

  1. Disable rbenv
    1.1 Delete or comment out source /home/$user/.rbenvrc in ~/.profile
    1.2 Delete or comment our eval "$(rbenv init -)" in ~/.bashrcor~/.zshrc`
    1.3 To take effect you may have to restart your shell or log out and log in again from your current linux session
  2. Install asdf by following the official [...

Jasmine: Preventing unhandled promise rejections from failing your test

You have an async function that rejects:

async function failingFunction() {
  throw new Error("Something went wrong")
}

When you call that function in a test, your test will fail:

it('has a test', function() {
  failingFunction() // this will fail your test
})

The failure message will look like this:

Unhandled promise rejection: Error: Something went wrong

You can fix this by expecting the state of the returned promise:

it('has a test', async function() {
  await expectAsync(failingFunction()).toBeRej...

Decide whether cronjobs should run on one or all servers

Understanding your type of cronjob

Some cronjobs must only run on a single server. E.g. when you run nightly batch operations on the database, it should probably run on a single server. Running it on multiple servers would likely result in deadlocks or corrupt data.

Some cronjobs must always run on all servers. E.g. starting a sidekiq process on reboot.

Configuring whenever

If not configured otherwise, cronjobs defined in whenever's `s...

Take care of indentation and blank lines when using .erb for plain text emails

Building plain text emails with an .erb template doesn't allow you to indent code like you normally do in HTML mails.

DON'T

<%= 'foo' if bar %>

"\n" if bar is false

"foo\n" if bar is true


<%= nil %>

"\n"


<% if true %>
  <%= 'foo' %>
<% end %>  

" foo"


<%= 'foo' %>

<%= 'bar' %>

"foo\n\nbar\n"

DO

Write unindented code to get the expected result.

<% if bar %>
<%= 'bar' %>
<% end %>
<%= 'foo' %>
<%= 'bar' %> 
  • Use [Form Models](https://github.com/makandra...

RSpec: run a single spec (Example or ExampleGroup)

RSpec allows you to mark a single Example/ExampleGroup so that only this will be run. This is very useful when using a test runner like guard.

Add the following config to spec/spec_helper.rb:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  # These two settings work together to allow you to limit a spec run
  # to individual examples or groups you care about by tagging them with
  # `:focus` metadata. When nothing is tagged with `:focus`, all examples
  # get run.
  config.filter_run_including :focus => true
  config.run_all_when_everything_filtere...

Use find_in_batches or find_each to deal with many records efficiently

Occasionally you need to do something directly on the server -- like having all records recalculate something that cannot be done in a migration because it takes a long time.

Let's say you do something like this:

Project.all.each(&:recalculate_statistics!)

Even though you may have been successful with this on your development machine or the staging server, keep in mind that production machines often hold a lot more records. Using all may just work, even with lots of records, but when you iterate over such records and fetch a...

CSS: Combining different length units with calc()

calc() lets you mix CSS units. Ever wanted to give an element "the container's width minus 20px on each side"? Here you go:

.foo {
  width: calc(100% - (20px * 2));
}

When using Sass, you need to interpolate Sass expressions:

$margin: 20px * 2

.foo
  width: calc(100% - #{$margin})

Supported by all modern browsers and IE9+.

How to fix: irb / rails console randomly crashing

If your irb or rails console keeps randomly crashing and you can't figure out why then you can try to disable multi-line autocomplete.

Sidekiq 7: Rate limiting with capsules

Sidekiq 7 adds a new feature called capsules.

Use cases:

  • a chrome queue limited to 1 for e.g. PDF processing to not overload the application server
  • an api queue, that limits a queue to 2 to protect the API server from too many requests in parallel

Example:

Sidekiq.configure_server do |config|
  # Edits the default capsule
  config.queues = %w[critical default low]
  config.concurrency = 5

  # Define a new capsule which ...

ActiveRecord::Relation#merge overwrites existing conditions on the same column

In Ruby on Rails ActiveRecord::Relation#merge overwrites existing conditions on the same column. This may cause the relation to select more records than expected:

authorized_users = User.where(id: [1, 2])
filtered_users   = User.where(id: [2, 3])
authorized_users.merge(filtered_users).to_sql
# => SELECT * FROM users WHERE id IN (2, 3)

The merged relation select the users (2, 3), although we are only allowed to see (1, 2). The merged result should be (2).

This card explores various workarounds to combine two scopes so t...

How to create a multiline map in SASS/SCSS

If you want to to create maps within SASS/SCSS-files, it normally works like this:

$some-map: (key1: value1, key2: value2)

However, some maps can get big really fast, if they are being used to contain all of the project's icon names and their sizes for example.
Therefore splitting a map into multiple lines, like we do it in Ruby with big hashes, would become really handy.

Unfortunately SASS doesn't support multiline maps. There has been an open issue since 2011 and it hasn't been...

Rubymine: Configure CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + c to work with "Test Source Roots"

To navigate between test and test subject Rubymine requires you to set the test root sources as Test Sources Root.

In case you are using the keyboard shortcut "CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + c" to copy the reference path + you have set the "Test Sources Root" for your test folders, you might consider setting this keyboard to "Copy From Repository Root". This will return the path `spec/foo_spec....

Webpacker: Configuring browser compatibility

Webpacker uses Babel and Webpack to transpile modern JavaScript down to EcmaScript 5. Depending on what browser a project needs to support, the final Webpack output needs to be different. E.g. when we need to support IE11 we can rely on fewer JavaScript features. Hence our output will be more verbose than when we only need support modern browsers.

Rails 5.1+ projects often use Webpacker to preconfigure the Webpack pipeline for us. The default configuration works something like this:

  1. Webpack checks w...

Do not use transparent PNGs for iOS favicons

Safari on iOS accepts an apple-touch-icon favicon that is used for stuff like desktop bookmarks. Always define a solid background color for them.

If you use PNGs with a transparent background, Safari will use just set a black background on your pretty icon. This is almost never what you want.
You can fix that by applying a white background via ImageMagick like this:

convert a...

Breaking changes for boolean attributes in HAML 6

Haml 6 has some breaking changes regarding boolean attributes.

Only the following attributes and aria/data attributes are considered boolean attributes: allowfullscreen, async, autobuffer, autofocus, autoplay, checked, controls, default, defer, disabled, download, formnovalidate, hidden, inert, ismap, itemscope, loop, multiple, muted, novalidate, open, pubdate, readonly, required, `re...

Rails: Assigning associations via HTML forms

Let's say we have posts with an attribute title that is mandatory.

Our example feature request is to tag these posts with a limited number of tags. The following chapters explain different approaches in Rails, how you can assign such an association via HTML forms. In most cases you want to use Option 4 with assignable values.

The basic setup for all options looks like this:

config/routes.rb

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  root "posts#index"
  resources :posts, except: [:show, :destroy]
end

**db/migrate/...