How to: Solve gem loaded specs mutex

Use bundler > 1.15 to fix Gem::LOADED_SPECS_MUTEX (NameError).


Given the following project:

ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7

bundler -v
Bundler version 1.13.7

gem -v
1.8.30

rails -v
Rails 3.2.22.1

Running specs or features resulted in:

uninitialized constant Gem::LOADED_SPECS_MUTEX (NameError)

The previous settings described in Maximum version of Rubygems and Bundler for Ruby 1.8.7 and Rails 2.3 (even the rails version was rails 3.2 and not 2.3) seems not to work here, so I used (also described in the ca...

How to control Chromedriver using curl

Here is how to use Chromedriver without libraries like selenium-webdriver. This can be useful for debugging.

The following example visits a web page and reads the a headline's text contents.

  1. Create a session. You will get a JSON response containing lots of information about your Chrome session, including a sessionId. Use that to send any future commands to your chromedriver session.

    $ curl -XPOST http://localhost:9515/session -d '{"desiredCapabilities":{"browserName":"chrome"}}'
    {"sessionId":"your-session-id-here","sta...
    

RSpec expects pending tests to fail

When flagging a spec that will be implemented later as pending, include a failing spec body or RSpec 3 will consider the pending test as failing.

The reasoning is: If the spec is flagged as pending but passes, it should not be pending. So these will fail:

it 'does something' do
  pending
end

it 'does something else' do
  pending
  expect(1).to eq(1)
end

The first case may be unexpected, if you just wanted to write down that something should eventually happen that will be implemented later.

Instead, ...

XHR is not JSON

When a Rails controller action should handle both HTML and JSON responses, do not use request.xhr? to decide that. Use respond_to.

I've too often seen code like this:

def show
  # ...
  if request.xhr?
    render json: @user.as_json
  else
     # renders default HTML view
  end
end

This is just plain wrong. Web browsers often fetch JSON via XHR, but they (should) also send the correct Accept HTTP header to tell the server the data they expect to receive.

If you say request.xhr? as a means for "wants JSON" you are ...

Think twice before using application names in your variables and methods

I recently had fun with replacing a custom video plattform ("mycustomtv") in one of our applications. I learned a lot about naming stuff.

youtube_mycustomtv_chooser is a bad name for a directive.

Why?

  • if you add, for example, other video systems like vimeo, the name of the method either lies or will get longer.
  • if you replace one system, you will have to change the method and all of its occurrences (and you're very lucky if it is only one poorly named thing in your application)

What would be a better solution?

Abstract fro...

Katapult 0.4.0 released

Features

  • Generating a project README
  • Finally: Support for modelling associations between models in your application model! Example:
# lib/katapult/application_model.rb

model 'Cart' do |cart|
  cart.belongs_to 'User'
end

crud 'User' do |user|
  user.attr :fullname
end

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...

Cucumber: How to avoid VCR errors for unused requests in pending tests

When you have a pending Cucumber step (or feature) that also uses an existing VCR cassette, your pending test may fail at the very end with an error like this:

There are unused HTTP interactions left in the cassette:
  - [get ...] => [200 ...]
  - [get ...] => [200 ...] (VCR::Errors::UnusedHTTPInteractionError)

The error happens because your VCR is configured to complain about cassettes that contain extra requests which your test did not use. This is often a good configuration.
If you do not want to change your whole test suite...

Katapult 0.3.0 released

Katapult 0.3.0 brings Rails 5 and Ruby 2.5 support with a new design, plus a ton of smaller features, fixes and improvements.

Features

  • Generating a Rails 5.1.4 app on Ruby 2.5.0
  • Dropped asset pipeline in favor of Webpacker
  • The generated application now has a sleek, simple design based on Bootstrap
  • Employing Unpoly
  • New application model DSL shortcut crud for "create a model and a web UI with crud actions"
  • The generated application model is now a transformable e...

Ruby: Using all? with empty collection

Enumerable#all? returns true for an empty collection. This totally makes sense but you have to think about it when making assumptions on relations which might be empty.

[].all?(&:will_never_be_called_here) => true

Example with empty collection

class Researcher < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :papers
end

class Paper
  validates :topic, inclusion: { in: ['computer_science', 'mathematics', 'economy'] }
end

Easy goal: Delete all researches who write onl...

Capybara: A step for finding images with filename and extension

This cucumber step is useful for testing an image (looking at the src of the image).

Then(/^I should see the image "([^"]*)"$/) do |filename_with_extension|
  expect(page).to have_css("img[src*='#{filename_with_extension}']")
end
Then I should see the image "placeholder.png"

Outline: Read more about how to test a uploaded file here, e.g. file downloads.

How to debug Rails autoloading

ActiveSupport::Dependencies takes care of auto-loading any classes in development. This is usually useful, but when you run into issues with the Rails autoloader, you should take a look at what it's doing.

For me this was useful in an "exciting" case of auto-loading classes inside a thread which caused the application to stop responding.

Rails 4.x

ActiveSupport::Dependencies includes logging support. It is easy to use:

ActiveSupport::Dependencies.logger = Rails.logger

Rails 5+

[Logging support was removed](https://github...

Carrierwave: Deleting files outside of forms

TL;DR Use user.update!(remove_avatar: true) to delete attachments outside of forms. This will have the same behavior as if you were in a form.


As you know, Carrierwave file attachments work by mounting an Uploader class to an attribute of the model. Though the database field holds the file name as string, calling the attribute will always return the uploader, no matter if a file is attached or not. (Side note: use #present? on the uploader to check if the file exists.)

class User < ApplicationRecord
  mount :avatar, ...

RSpec: How to check that an ActiveRecord relation contains exactly these elements

To check which elements an ActiveRecord relation contains use the contain_exactly matcher.

describe User do
  let!(:admin) { create(:user, role: 'admin') }
  let!(:customer) { create(:user, role: 'customer') }
  
  subject(:users) { User.where(role: 'admin') }
  
  # Recommended (The error output is most helpful)
  it { expect(users).to contain_exactly(admin) }
  
  # Other options
  it { expect(users).to eq([admin]) }
  it { expect(users.pluck(:id).to eq([admin.id]) }
end

In case you have an `ActiveRecord::AssociationRelati...

Rails and Postgres: How to test if your index is used as expected

This is a small example on how you can check if your Postgres index can be used by a specific query in you Rails application. For more complex execution plans it might still be a good idea to use the same path of proof.

1. Identify the query your application produces

query = User.order(:last_name, :created_at).to_sql
puts query
# => SELECT "users".* FROM "users" ORDER BY "users"."last_name" ASC, "users"."created_at" ASC

2. Add an index in your migration and migrate

add_index :users, [:last_name, :created_at]...

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...

Error during Rails 5 upgrade: Environment data not found in the schema

This error is raised because your old database does not have a configured environment yet, which Rails 5 enforces.

If this error occurs while migrating your parallel test databases, make sure to update the parallel_tests gem first: current versions fix this. If you're still using Cucumber < v3, the latest version of parallel_tests will be 2.18.0.

Writing a README for a project

Rails applications and ruby gems should have a README that gives the reader a quick overview of the project. Its size will vary as projects differ in complexity, but there should always be some introductory prose for a developer to read when starting on it.

Purpose

That's already the main purpose of a project README: Give a new developer a quick overview of the project. In sketching this outline, the README should notify the reader of any peculiarity he needs to know of.

Remember that in a few months, you'll be a kind of "new ...

How to use cookies with curl

When making requests using curl, no cookies are sent or stored by default.
However, you can tell curl to re-use cookies received earlier (or forge your own cookies).

There are 2 command line switches you need to use:

  • -c will write cookies to a given file
  • -b will read cookies from a given file

Example

The remote server sets a "foo" cookie to value "bar". We tell curl to store them to a file at /tmp/cookies using the -c switch.

$ curl -c /tmp/cookies http://httpbin.org/cookies/set?foo=bar

You may look at the file, ...

Rails: Migration helper for inserting records without using models

You should avoid using application models in your migrations. But how else could you create records in a migration?

The most basic way is to write plain SQL, but since INSERT statements are no pleasant write for Rubyists, here is a simple wrapper:

Record creation helper for migrations

The helper method below takes a table name and a hash of attributes, which it inserts into the specified table. Copy it over to your migration and profit!

  private

  def insert_record(table, **attributes)
    attributes.merge!...

CSS: Giving text lines a background-color (with configurable line padding and margin)

The gist is:

  • wrap the text with a span
  • use line-height for the spacing between lines ("margin")
  • use box-shadow to control the line background size ("padding")

Example

text_lines_with_background_color.png

span
  box-shadow: 0 0 0 10px #fff
  background-color: #fff
  box-decoration-break: clone # Fix Firefox
  line-height: 2.2

→ [jsfiddle](https://jsfiddle.net/2fmqgbh...

Jasmine: Mocking API requests in an Angular service spec

Situation: You want to write a spec for a function inside an Angular service. This function at some point makes an API request and acts upon response. Notably, your Angular app employs uiRouter, although it is not used nor actually required for this test.

Working test setup

# Capitalized expressions are intended to be replaced with YOUR values

describe 'SERVICE', ->

  beforeEach ->
    module 'MODULE'

    module ($urlRouterProvider) ->
      # Prevent uiRouter's initialization, i.e. do not sync the current URL
      # with its r...

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...

HTML: Making browsers wrap long words

By default, browsers will not wrap text at syllable boundaries. Text is wrapped at word boundaries only.

This card explains some options to make browsers wrap inside a long word like "Donaudampfschifffahrt".

Option 1: hyphens CSS property (preferred)

Modern browsers can hyphenate natively. Use the hyphens CSS property:

hyphens: auto

There is also hyphens: none (disable hyphenations even at &shy; entities) and hyphens: manual (hy...