Passive event listeners may speed up your scroll and touch events

Scroll and touch event listeners tend to be computationally expensive as they are triggered very often. Every time the event is fired, the browser needs to wait for the event to be processed before continuing - the event could prevent the default behavior. Luckily there is a concept called passive event listeners which is supported by all modern browsers.

Below are the key parts quoted from WICG's explainer on passive event listeners. See [this demo video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPM6172...

whenever: Installing cron jobs only for a given Rails environment or Capistrano stage

We use the whenever gem to automatically update the crontab of the servers we deploy to. By default, whenever will update all servers with a matching role (we use the :cron role ).

This card describes how to install some tasks only for a given Rails environment or for a given Capistrano stage ("deployment target").

Installing jobs only for a given Rails environment
-----------------------------------...

Rails: Removing the cucumber-rails warning when setting cache_classes to false without Spring enabled

We are using Spring in our tests for sequential test execution but not for parallel test execution. And Rails requires you to set the config.cache_classes = false if you are using Spring in tests.

With our setup, this would raise the following error in cucumber-rails for parallel test executions due to some legacy database cleaner issue.

WARNING: You have set Rails' config.cache_classes to false
    (Spring needs cache_classes set to false). This is known to cause probl...

JavaScript: How to query the state of a Promise

Native promises have no methods to inspect their state.

You can use the promiseState function below to check whether a promise is fulfilled, rejected or still pending:

promiseState(promise, function(state) {
  // `state` now either "pending", "fulfilled" or "rejected"
});

Note that the callback passed to promiseState will be called asynchronously in the next [microtask](https://jakearchibald.com/2015/tasks-microtasks-queues-and-schedules/...

Using Capybara finder methods with arbitrary matching conditions

Capybara has a variety of finder methods like find_button to help you look up DOM elements. There are also matchers like have_field to make expectations during tests.

These methods also have a number of options to influence the lookup. E.g. the :disabled option lets you control whether Capybara will match disabled fields.

If you have a matching condition that cannot be expressed by the existing Capybara opt...

Parallelize Development Using Git Worktrees

You can use git worktree to manage multiple working trees attached to the same repository. But why should I use git worktree?

You can use more than one working tree to ...

... run tests while working on another branch
... compare multiple versions
... work on a different branch without disturbing your current branch

Creating a new working tree is as simple as creating a new branch. You only need to execute git worktree add <path> <branch>. When you are done, you can remove the working tree with git worktree remove <Worktree>...

How to update a single gem conservatively

The problem

Calling bundle update GEMNAME will update a lot more gems than you think. E.g. when you do this:

bundle update cucumber-rails

... you might think this will only update cucumber-rails. But it actually updates cucumber-rails and all of its dependencies. This will explode in your face when one of these dependencies release a new version with breaking API changes. Which is all the time.

In the example above updating cucumber-rails will give you Capybara 2.0 (because capybara is a dependency of `cucumber-rail...

Jasmine: Fixing common errors during initialization

Due to the way we setup Jasmine tests in our projects, you may run into various errors when Jasmine boots.

Setting jasmineRequire on undefined

Jasmine 4 may fail with an error like this:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set properties of undefined (setting 'jasmineRequire')

This is due to issues in Jasmine's [environment detection](https://github.com/jasmine/jasmine/blob/502cb24bb89212917a3c943b593fd918ffc481cb/lib/jasmine-core/...

How to define a table name prefix for all Rails models in a given namespace

ActiveRecord computes table names of model classes, and results are usually just like you'd expect.
Adding a prefix for all classes in a namespace can feel a odd or broken, but does not have to be. It's actually very easy when done right.

Summary (tl;dr)

Here's the short version: Define a table_name_prefix method in the namespace module, and do not define any table_name_prefix in ActiveRecord classes inside of it. If this sounds familiar, we have [a card about using it already](https://makandracards.com/makandra/47198-rails-namespac...

A simpler default controller implementation

Rails has always included a scaffold script that generates a default controller implementation for you. Unfortunately that generated controller is unnecessarily verbose.

When we take over Rails projects from other teams, we often find that controllers are the unloved child, where annoying glue code has been paved over and over again, negotiating between request and model using implicit and convoluted protocols.

We prefer a different approach. We believe that among all the classes in a Rails project, controllers are some of the hardest to...

RubyMine: Find and Replace with Regex (Capture Groups and Backreferences)

tl;dr

In RubyMine you can use find and replace with capture groups (.*?) and backreferences $1 (if you have several groups: $[Capture-Group ID]).
Named captures (?<text>.*) are also supported.

Examples

Replace double quotes with single quotes

If you want to replace double quotes with single quotes, replacing every " with a ' is prone to errors. Regular expressions can help you out here.

  1. Open find and replace
  2. Activate the regex mode (click on the .* icon next to the "find" field).
  3. Fill in f...

Headless Chrome: Changing the Accept-Language header is not possible

It seems like changing the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE is not possible for a headless chrome.

  • On Ubuntu the headless Chrome derives the Accept-Language from the operation system
  • Adding the option options.add_argument('--lang=de') to the Capybara::Selenium::Driver has no effect
  • Adding the preference options.add_preference('intl.accept_languages', 'de') to the Capybara::Selenium::Driver has only effects if the --headless option is skipped (see bug ticket #775911)
  • Cha...

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...

Migrating from Elasticsearch to Opensearch: searchkick instructions (without downtime!)

General

A general overview about why and how we migrate can be found under Migrating from Elasticsearch to Opensearch

This card deals with specifics concerning the use of searchkick.

Step 1: Make Opensearch available for Searchkick

In your Gemfile

# Search
gem 'searchkick'                   # needs to be > 5, to use Opensearch 2
gem 'elasticsearch'
gem 'opensearch-ruby'

in config/initializers/searchkick.rb (or wherever you have configured your Searchkick settings) add:

SEARCHKICK_CLIENT_T...

Careful when using Time objects for generating ETags

You can use ETags to allow clients to use cached responses, if your application would send the same contents as before.

Besides what "actually" defines your response's contents, your application probably also considers "global" conditions, like which user is signed in:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  etag { current_user&.id }
  etag { current_user&.updated_at }

end

Under the hood, Rails generates an ETag header value like W/"f14ce3710a2a3187802cadc7e0c8ea99". In doing so, all objects from that etagge...

Install or update Chromedriver on Linux

Option 0: Download from the official page (preferred)

Chromedriver must be available in your path. You can add ~/bin to your path like this:

echo "export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin" >> $HOME/.bash_profile

If you're also using Geordi, disable automatic updating of chromedriver in ~/.config/geordi/global.yml:

a...

HTTP Client in RubyMine

RubyMine has a HTTP Client that can be useful to test web APIs.
Just create a .http scratch file an write your request in it.
The request can then be executed with the "Run all requests in File" button above the file.

Some alternatives:

The format for request is like this:

Method Request-URI HTTP-Version
Header-field: Heade...

Video transcoding: Web and native playback overview (April 2020)

Intro

Embedding videos on a website is very easy, add a <video> tag to your source code and it just works. Most of the time.

The thing is: Both the operating system and Browser of your client must support the container and codecs of your video. To ensure playback on every device, you have to transcode your videos to one or more versions of which they are supported by every device out there.

In this card, I'll explore the available audio and video standards we have right now. The goal is to built a pipeline that...

Git diff: Deemphasizing code that was only moved around

In long diffs, it can become impossible to spot small changes in larger blocks of moved code. This may be either a method that was moved from the top to the bottom of a file, or a long test file that was split in many.

Fortunately, Git offers a special highlighting mode that directs the reader's attention to relevant code parts:

git diff --color-moved=dimmed-zebra

It will dim lines that were moved around without changes, and highlight changed lines.
To easily use dimmed-zebra mode, configure an alias:

# ~/.gitconfig
[alias]
 ...

Check that an element is hidden via CSS with Spreewald

If you have content inside a page that is hidden by CSS, the following will work with Selenium, but not when using the Rack::Test driver. The Selenium driver correctly only considers text that is actually visible to a user.

Then I should not see "foobear"

This is because the Rack::Test driver does not know if an element is visible, and only looks at the DOM.

Spreewald offers steps to check that an element is hidden by CSS:

Then "foo" should be hidden

You can also check that an el...

RSpec: automatic creation of VCR cassettes

This RailsCast demonstrated a very convenient method to activate VCR for a spec by simply tagging it with :vcr.

For RSpec3 the code looks almost the same with a few minor changes. If you have the vcr and webmock gems installed, simply include:

# spec/support/vcr.rb
VCR.configure do |c|
  c.cassette_library_dir = Rails.root.join("spec", "vcr")
  c.hook_into :webmock
end

RSpec.configure do |c|
  c.around(:each, :vcr) do |example|
    name = example.metadata[:full_descripti...

An auto-mapper for ARIA labels and BEM classes in Cucumber selectors

Spreewald comes with a selector_for helper that matches an English term like the user's profile into a CSS selector. This is useful for steps that refer to a particular section of the page, like the following:

Then I should see "Bruce" within the user's profile
                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you're too lazy to manually translate English to a CSS selector by adding a line to features/env/selectors.rb, we already have an [auto-mapper to translate English into ...

Why preloading associations "randomly" uses joined tables or multiple queries

ActiveRecord gives you the :include option to load records and their associations in a fixed number of queries. This is called preloading or eager loading associations. By preloading associations you can prevent the n+1 query problem that slows down a many index view.

You might have noticed that using :include randomly seems to do one of the following:

  1. Execute one query per involved table with a condit...

How to simulate limited bandwidth in Google Chrome and Firefox

Your development machine is usually on a very good network connection.
To test how your application behaves on a slow network (e.g. mobile), you can simulate limited bandwidth.

Chrome

  • Open the dev tools (Ctrl+Shift+I or F12) and switch to the "Network" tab
  • In the row below the dev tool tabs, there's a throttling dropdown which reads "Online" by default.
  • Inside the dropdown, you will find a few presets and an option to add your own download/upload/latency settings.

Firefox

  • Open the dev tools (Ctrl+Shift+I or F12) and switc...