Geordi's cucumber command has a --rerun option that reruns failing tests the given number of times. Usage:

geordi cucumber path/to/features --rerun=2
geordi cucumber path/to/features -r2

Background and how to rerun manually

Cucumber will save a file tmp/parallel_cucumber_failures.log containing the filenames and line number of the failed scenarios after a full test run. Normally you can say cucumber -p rerun (rerun is a profile defined by default in config/cucumber.yml) to rerun all failed scenarios.

Here are a few al...

HTML's <input type="file"> accepts a single file. You can allow multiple files via <input type="file" multiple>.
But sometimes, selecting multiple files is not enough and can be cumbersome for the user. Enter webkitdirectory:

<input type="file" webkitdirectory multiple>

Using webkitdirectory switches the browser's file picker to select a directory. All files inside that directory, and inside any nested subdirectories, will be selected for the file input.

This can be useful when users want to upload all files from a nested dire...

If you use transactional_fixtures or the database_cleaner gem with strategy :transaction, after_commit callbacks will not be fired in your tests.

Rails 5+

Rails 5 has a fix for this issue and no further action is needed.

Rails 3, Rails 4

Add the gem test_after_commit to your test group in the Gemfile and you are done. You don't need to change the database strategy to deletion (wh...

If validations failed for a record, and you want to find out if a specific validation failed, you can leverage ActiveModel's error objects.
You rarely need this in application code (you usually just want to print error messages), but it can be useful when writing tests.

As an example, consider the following model which uses two validations on the email attribute.

class User < ApplicationRecord
  validates :email, presence: true, uniqueness: true
end

Accessing errors

Let's assume we have a blank user:

user = Us...

Restricting access to cookies is essential for security in many web apps. For example, the session ID, the secret token used to identify a particular session, is typically stored in a cookie. Cookies have several important settings. Previously, I discussed the secure flag. This time, let’s dive into the cookie domain.

The cookie domain is an important security feature, probably even more important than the secure flag. It tells the browser that this cookie must only be sent to matching domains. Matching however, can happen in several w...

Let's say you have a gem which has the following module:

module SuperClient

  def self.foo
    'Foo'
  end
  
  def bar
    'Bar'
  end

end

For reasons you need to override foo and bar.

Keep in mind: Your code quality is getting worse with with each prepend (other developers are not happy to find many library extensions). Try to avoid it if possible.

1. Add a lib/ext/super_client.rb to your project (see How to organize monkey patches in Ruby on Rails projects)
2. Add the extension, which ov...

We want to keep a changelog for all gems we maintain. There are some good practices for writing a changelog that adds value, please stick to these.

• Add a notice to the README's contribute section about the changelog
• For every release update the changelog
• Note the date format yyyy-mm-tt

What is a changelog?

A changelog is a file which contains a curated, chronologically ordered list of notable changes for each version of a project.

Why keep a changelog?

To make it easier for users and...

Most forms have a single submit button that will save the record when pressed.

Sometimes a form needs additional submit buttons like "accept" or "reject". Such buttons usually attempt a state transition while updating the record.

To process a form with multiple buttons, your server-side code will need to know which button was pressed. To do so you can give each submit button a different [formaction] attribute. This will override the ...

Migrating data from a legacy into a new system can be a surprisingly large undertaking. We have done this a few times. While there are significant differences from project to project, we do have a list of general suggestions.

Before you start, talk to someone who has done it before, and read the following hints:

Understand the old system

Before any technical considerations, you need to understand the old system as best as possible. If feasible, do not only look at its API, or database, or frontend, but let a user of the old system sho...

At makandra, we've built a few gems over the years. Some of these are quite popular: spreewald (> 1M downloads), active_type (> 1M downloads), and geordi (> 200k downloads)

Developing a Ruby gem is different from developing Rails applications, with the biggest difference: there is no Rails. This means:

• no defined structure (neither for code nor directories)
• no autoloading of classes, i.e. you need to require all files yourself
• no active_support niceties

Also, their scope...

Having a unique selector for an element is useful to later select it from JavaScript or to update a fragment with an Unpoly.

Haml lets you use square brackets ([]) to generate a unique class name and ID from a given Ruby object. Haml will infer a class attribute from the given object's Ruby class. It will also infer an id attribute from the given object's Ruby class and #id method.

This is especially useful with ActiveRecord instances, which have a persisted #id and will hence **generate the same selector o...

Haml lets you prefix a group of attributes by wrapping them in a hash. This is only possible with the {} attribute syntax, not with the () attribute syntax.

Example: HTML5 data attributes

HTML5 allows you to use arbitrary attributes like data-method and data-confirm. You can prefix a group of data- attributes like this:

%a{href: '/path', data: { method: 'delete', confirm: 'Really delete?' }} Label

This compiles to:

<a data-confirm='Really delete?' data-method='delete' href='/path'>Label</a>

Exa...

As a web developer, you know Google Analytics (GA). Probably you've dropped the GA snippet into more than one website, maybe you've even used its Javascript API to implement tracking at the event level.

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a related tool, but on a higher level and thus with much more power. GTM is not a replacement for GA. Rather, it can make GA configurable without changing anything in the application's code base (and much more beyond, see below).

Only prefer GTM if the customer requests it, or if he is updating his tracking r...

Why secure-only cookies used to be necessary

Cookies have an optional secure flag. It tells the browser to not send the cookie for a non-https request.

It used to be important to activate the secure flag even on sites that automatically redirect users from http:// to https://. The reason was that most users will only enter a scheme-less domain like makandra.de into their location bar, which will default to `http://m...

Rails defines a #truncate helper as well as a method String#truncate.

= truncate("my string", length: 5)
= "my string".truncate(5)

Both are really similar; in fact, the helper invokes the method and improves it with two niceties: support for passing a block (which could e.g. render a "read on" link), and html_safe knowledge.

Prefer the truncate() helper

Warning: truncate() calls html_safe if you're not escaping. FWIW, an HTML string may easily become invalid when truncated, e.g. when a closing tag gets chopped off.
...

Ruby has this handy block shortcut map(&:to_i) for map { |x| x.to_i }. However, it is limited to argument-less method invocations.

To call a method with an argument, you usually need to use the full block form. A common and annoying case is retrieving values from a list of hashes (imagine using a JSON API):

users = [ { name: 'Dominik', color: 'blue' }, { name: 'Stefan', color: 'red'} ]
names = users.collect do |user|
  user[:name]
end

If you're using Rails 5+, this example is covered by Enumerable#pluck (`users.pluck(:name)...

The method cookies is defined in the ActionController and should never be overwritten.

Bad example

class StaticPagesController < ApplicationController

  def imprint
  end

  def cookies
    redirect_to '/'
  end

end

If you create an action called cookies, any call to the cookie storage will be broken and call the method. What's more, in this example calls to static_pages_controller#imprint might as well end up redirecting to the homepage.

Solution

Just define the action as cookies_action or similar and adjust...

When you need to store structured data (like Ruby hashes) in a single database column with ActiveRecord, a simple way is to use PostgreSQL's jsonb columns. ActiveRecord will automatically serialize and deserialize your Hash to and from JSON, and you can index JSON paths for fast reads.

As an alternative, ActiveRecord::Store offers a way to store hashes in a single database column. This card will show you how to migrate those hashes in an ActiveRecord::Migration by example:
...

There is a kinda secret, yet well supported CSS feature called currentColor. It's like a special CSS variable that has been supported in almost all browsers for almost all time (see linked Caniuse).

Usage

The currentColor value can be used in CSS to indicate the current value of color should be used. A common use case is setting a border color:

a.ghost
  color: white
  border: 1px solid currentColor
  &:hover
    color: red // Border color will change as well 

Note that in many cases, you can simply omit the color to ac...

Definition

A matcher is a function that returns an object with a compare key. Usually it is registered with beforeEach:

beforeEach(() => {
  jasmine.addMatchers({
  
    // Example matcher
    toBeAnything() {
      return {
        compare(actualValue, ...matcherArguments) {
           // Do some computations here ...
         
           // Return whether the actualValue matches the expectation
           return {pass: true}
         }
      }
    }
  })
})

Usage

expect(actualValue).toBeAnything(...matcherArg...

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...