How to read the current breakpoint tier(s) in JavaScript

To read the current breakpoint tier in JavaScript, employ this CSS:

:root {
  --current-breakpoint-tier: xs;
  
  @media (min-width: $screen-sm-min) {
    --current-breakpoint-tier: sm;
  }
  @media (min-width: $screen-md-min) {
    --current-breakpoint-tier: md;
  }
  @media (min-width: $screen-lg-min) {
    --current-breakpoint-tier: lg;
  }
  @media (min-width: $screen-xl-min) {
    --current-breakpoint-tier: xl;
  }
  @media (min-width: $screen-xxl-min) {
    --current-breakpoint-tier: xxl;
  }
}

Then use this JavaScript:

Timecop: reset after each test

Timecop is a great gem to set the current time in tests. However, it is easy to introduce flakyness to your test suite when you forget to reset the time after the test.
This might be the case if:

  • a test freezes time and a later test does not work for frozen time
  • a later test needs the real current date to work correctly

Often you only notice these kinds of errors in rare cases when tests are executed in a particular order.

A way to avoid this is by using block notation (`Timecop.travel(...) ...

How to develop designs for an enterprise customer

Usually, design development starts with drafts, sketches and prototypes. These are reviewed, refined and iterated until the final design is ready – shiny, accepted and ready for implementation. I believe this works well when you get to work with the final decider in person.

However, this approach is not successful when the customer has complex internal structures ("Enterprise"). While the drafts and iterations might be all approved by the department you're working directly with ("Fachbereich"), deciders further up the hierarchy (the CEO, po...

Rails: Passing array values to tag helpers like link_to

From at least Rails 4, the ActionView tag helper turns Array values of HTML options into a single space-separated string.
This means you can pass an array to :class options:

extra_classes = %w[one two]

= link_to 'Dashboard', root_path, class: ['btn', 'btn-primary', *extra_classes]
=> <a href="/" class="btn btn-primary one two">Dashboad</a>

= content_tag 'div', 'Hello World', class: %w[alert alert-info]
=> <div class="alert alert-info">Hello World</div>...

Self-expiring URLs with Apache

When delivering non-public uploaded files (images, documents etc), one has to decide whether and how to do authorization. The usual approaches are:

  • Using send_file with a regular controller. This is secure, but potentially slow, especially for large collections of images.
  • Using unguessable URLs. This is fast (because Apache can deliver assets without going through Rails), but less secure.

When going with the "unguessable URL" approach, it is possible to somewhat increase security by using expiring URLs. The idea is to encode the expi...

Carrierwave: always limit images to a reasonable size

Today's cameras create huge images, some beyond 50MB. Unless you need to offer this large files, you should always shrink uploaded files to a reasonable resolution.

class ImageUploader < CarrierWave::Uploader::Base
  
  process resize_to_limit: [3000, 3000]
  
  # ...

end

Heads up: JavaScript does not like big numbers

In a JavaScript console, type this:

> 9112347935156469760
9112347935156470000

Ooops. And that's not a float!

This occurs because JavaScript uses double precision floats to store numbers.

So according to IEEE floating point definition only numbers between -(2^53 - 1) (-9007199254740991) and 2^53 - 1 (9007199254740991) can safely be represented in JavaScript.

Note that ECMAScript 6 will probably also offer [Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W...

How to evaluate CSS media queries in JavaScript

To make CSS rules dependent on the screen size, we use media queries:

@media (max-width: 500px) {
  // rules for screen widths of 500px or smaller
}

Browsers will automatically enable and disable the conditional rules as the screen width changes.

To detect responsive breakpoints from JavaScript, you may use the global matchMedia() function. It is supported in all brow...

Don't mix Array#join and String#html_safe

You cannot use Array#join on an array of strings where some strings are html_safe and others are not. The result will be an unsafe string and will thus be escaped when rendered in a view:

unsafe_string = '<span>foo</span>'
safe_string = '<span>bar</span>'.html_safe
[unsafe_string, safe_string].join(' ') # will incorrectly render as '&lt;span&gt;foo&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&t;bar&lt;/span&gt;'

Bad

The solution is not to call html_safe on the joined array and if you thought it would be, you [don't understand how XSS prot...

RSpec: Expecting non-primitive objects as method invocation arguments

Expecting a primitive value as an argument to a method invocation is easy:

expect(object).to receive(:foo).with('arg1', 'arg2')

This expectation would be met with this call:

object.foo('arg1', 'arg2')

But what if the argument is expected to be an object with a given set of methods? E.g. this class with #first_name and #last_name methods:

class Person

  def initialize(first_name, last_name)
    @first_name = first_name
    @last_name = last_name
  end
  
  attr_reader :first_name, :last_name
  
end
``...

Rails: Including HTML in your i18n locales

TL;DR

Append your locale keys with _html to have them marked as html_safe and translate them with = t('.text_html').

When you're localizing a Rails application, sometimes there is this urge to include a little HTML. Be it some localized link, or a set of <em> tags, you'd like to have it included in the locale file. Example:

# Locale file
en:
  page:
    text: 'Please visit our <a href="https://www.corporate.com/en">corporate website</a> to learn more about <em>the corporation</em>.'
    
# HAML
= t('.text')
    
# D...

How to create giant memory leaks in AngularJS (and other client-side JavaScript)

This guide shows how to create an AngularJS application that consumes more and more memory until, eventually, the browser process crashes on your users.

Although this guide has been written for Angular 1 originally, most of the advice is relevant for all client-side JavaScript code.

How to observe memory consumption

To inspect the amount of memory consumed by your Javascripts in Chrome:

  • Open an incognito window
  • Open the page you want to inspect
  • Press Shift + ESC to see a list of Chrome processes...

Jasmine: Mocking ESM imports

In a Jasmine spec you want to spy on a function that is imported by the code under test. This card explores various methods to achieve this.

Example

We are going to use the same example to demonstrate the different approaches of mocking an imported function.

We have a module 'lib' that exports a function hello():

// lib.js

function hello() {
  console.log("hi world")
}

export hello

We have a second module 'client' that exports a function helloTwice(). All this does is call hello() ...

Heads up: RSpec-Mocks' #stub_const will define intermediate modules that have not been loaded yet

The issue: You are using stub_const to change a constant value for your test.

stub_const "SomeClass::CONST", 'test'

All of a sudden, tests fail with undefined method 'some_method' for #<SomeClass:0x00000000101433a8>.

The reason

When using stub_const before the Class containing the constant has been loaded, a module is automatically created with the name.

Since RSpec does no autoloading, it will create a SomeClass module by itself. This is arguably a good idea.

As a workaround, use stub_const in your Rails specs li...

BigDecimal arithmetic in Ruby

Ruby comes with a class BigDecimal which you can use for arbitrary precision arithmetic. You should use BigDecimal instead of Float whenever you care about rounding errors, e.g. whenever you are dealing with money.

You should remember these two rules when working with BigDecimal values:

  • When you add or multiply a BigDecimal with another BigDecimal, the ...

sessionStorage: Per-window browser storage

All major browsers (IE8+, FF3.5+, Safari 4+, any Chrome) support sessionStorage, a JavaScript storage object that

  • survives page reloads and browser restores,
  • but is different per new tab/window (in contrast to localStorage which is shared across all tabs).

MDN says:

The sessionStorage object is most useful for hanging on to temporary data that should be saved and restored if the browser is accidentally refreshed

Demo

Example usage:

Set default_url_options for entire Rails application

Instead of cobbling together default settings in several different places as the issues arise, you can define them application-wide.

Heads up: Capybara 3's text matchers no longer squish whitespace by default

Until Capybara 2, node finders that accept a text option were able to find nodes based on rendered text, even if it spans over multiple elements in the HTML. Imagine a page that includes this HTML:

<div class='haystack'>
  Hi!
  <br>
  Try to match me.
</div>

Even though the text is separated by a <br> tag in the HTML, it is matched until Capybara 2 which used to "squish" text prior to the comparison.

# Capyabara 1 or 2
page.find(...

Firefox cancels any JavaScript events at a fieldset[disabled]

If you try to listen to events on elements that are nested inside a <fieldset disabled>, Firefox will stop event propagation once the event reaches the fieldset. Chrome and IE/Edge will propagate events.

Since we often bind event listeners to document this can be annoying.

You could solve it by...

Beware: Many browsers define window.event

Some browsers define window.event, which will return a copy of the "current" event. However, this is not defined by the W3C. Most importantly, Firefox does not support it, neither do recent versions of IE.

You should completely avoid accessing the global event and instead pass the event object around that the event handler receives. The easiest protection against accidentally accessing window.event is just never naming the event event, but e or evnt or so.

function brokenInFirefox() {
  event.preventDefault(); // Break...

Heads up: network requests `Kernel#open` are not mocked with VCR

We usually rely on VCR and WebMock to prevent any real network connection when running our unit tests.

This is not entirely true: They are both limited to a set of HTTP libraries listed below (as of 2022). Direct calls to Kernel#open or OpenURI#open_uri are not mocked and will trigger real network requests even in tests. This might bite you e.g. in [older versions of CarrierWave](https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/blob/0.11-stable/lib/carrierwave/upl...

subscript, superscript and line-heights

By default subscript (<sub></sub>) and superscript (<sup></sup>) tags are styled with vertical-align: sub, respectively vertical-align: super by most browsers.
However, without adaptations, this will probably break your line-heights.

A common suggestion is to style those two tags accordingly:

sup, sub {
  vertical-align: baseline;
  position: relative;
  top: -0.4em;  /* can be adapted according to preferences */
}
sub {  
...

Linux: Running a single unique instance of command + arguments

run-one is a wrapper script that won't run the given command while another instance of it is running. Is brings several utility commands that offer similar behavior.

NAME
       run-one - run just one instance at a time of some command and unique set of arguments (useful for cronjobs, eg)

SYNOPSIS
       run-one COMMAND [ARGS]

       run-this-one COMMAND [ARGS]

       run-one-constantly COMMAND [ARGS]

       keep-one-running COMMAND [ARGS]

       run-one-until-success COMMAND [ARGS]

       run-one-until-failure COMMAND [ARGS]

...

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...