Your database tables should always have timestamps
Whenever you create a table from a database migration, remember to add updated_at and created_at timestamps to that table. Without those timestamps, investigating future bug reports will be hell. Always have timestamps.
Adding timestamps to new tables
When you create a table using create_table, you can add timestamps by using the timestamps shortcut:
```
class CreateEpisode < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
create_table :episodes do |t|
t.string :name
t.timestamps
…
Faking and testing the network with WebMock
An alternative to this technique is using VCR. VCR allows you to record and replay real HTTP responses, saving you the effort to stub out request/response cycles in close details. If your tests do require close inspection of requests and responses, Webmock is still the way.
WebMock is an alternative to FakeWeb when testing code that uses the network. You sh…
Howto: Write a proper git commit message
Seven Rules
- Separate subject from body with a blank line
- Limit the subject line to 50 characters (max. 72)
- Capitalize the subject line
- Do not end the subject line with a period
- Use the imperative mood in the subject subject line
- Wrap the body at 72 characters
- Use the body to explain what and why vs. how
5. Use the imperative mood in the subject subject line (partially extracted)
If applied, this commit will your subject line here
Good:
- If applied, this commit will **refactor subsystem X for readabili…
Touch devices don't have mouseover events
It might sound trivial, but there is no such thing as a "hover" or "mouseover" state on touch devices. If your application is supposed to work on iPads, smartphones, etc., don't hide information behind a tooltip, and don't make controls appear when hovering over another element.
Generally, things that happen/appear when you hover an element should do the same when you click the element.
Storing trees in databases
This card compares patterns to store trees in a relation database like MySQL or PostgreSQL. Implementation examples are for the ActiveRecord ORM used with Ruby on Rails, but the techniques can be implemented in any language or framework.
We will be using this example tree (from the acts_as_nested_set docs):
```text
root
|
+– Child 1
| |
| +– Child 1.1
| |
| +– Child 1.2
|
+– …
Use Parallel to speed up building the same html partial multiple times (for different data)
The parallel-gem is quite easy to use and can speed up rendering time if you want to render the same partial multiple times (e.g. for rendering long lists of things).
If your parallelized code talks to the database, you should ensure not to leak database connections.
Consider you want to render a list of groups with their members as json. You can use a partial for the rendering of group members, b…
Cucumber: Prevent outstanding AJAX requests to bleed into other scenarios
When using Cucumber with Selenium or some other Javascript-enabled browser, AJAX request can sometimes "bleed" into the next scenario. This happens when a scenario triggers an AJAX request near the end, but does not wait for it to complete.
To avoid this, add the attached code to your cucumber's /features/support directory. It will disable AJAX requests at the end of the scenario and wait for outstanding requests to complete.
Requires spreewald and only works for requests triggered by jQuery.
Cucumber step to match table rows with Capybara
These steps are now part of Spreewald.
This note describes a Cucumber step that lets you write this:
Then I should see a table with the following rows:
| Bruce Wayne | Employee | 1972 |
| Harleen Quinzel | HR | 1982 |
| Alfred Pennyworth | Engineering | 1943 |
If there are additional columns or rows in the table that are not explicitely expected, the step won't complain. It does however expect the rows to be ordered as stat…
RSpec: Debug flickering test suites with rspec --bisect
In modern default RSpec configurations, your tests are usually run in random order. This helps to detect "flickering" tests that only fail when run in a certain order.
The reason for this are tests that have side effects causing other tests to fail later. The hard part is to find the offending test.
Enter rspec --bisect:
- Say you have a flickering test that passes on its own, but you just saw it fail in a full test run. At the top of the RSpec output, you will see a message like
Randomized with seed 12345. Take a note of the number….
Cucumber pitfall: "Around" does not apply to your "Background" steps
Around will not happen until after a feature's Background has been processed. Use Before and After to avoid that.
Details
Consider this Cucumber feature file:
Feature: Something that needs to be tested
Background:
Given a user
And I sign in
Scenario: Sign out
When I sign out
Then I should see "Signed out"
Scenario: Something else
# ...
Now, assume you have these step definitions:
Around do
puts "** Around: before yield" ...
Updated: Beware: Nested Spreewald patiently blocks are not patient
Spreewald was updated to version 1.9.0 and does not wrap steps that use within in patiently anymore.
Git: undo delete
Assuming you're wanting to undo the effects of git rm or rm followed by git add -A or something similar:
This restores the file status in the index:
git reset -- <file>
then check out a copy from the index
git checkout -- <file>
To undo git add , the first line above suffices, assuming you haven't committed yet.
Note:
Make sure to use double dashes -- to tell git to checkout a file instead of a branch. This only is relevant for [files having the same name as a branch](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-ch…
Casting ActiveRecord scopes or instances to ActiveType extended model classes
When working with ActiveType you will often find it useful to cast an ActiveRecord instance to its extended ActiveType::Record variant.
Starting with active_type 0.4.0 you can use ActiveType.cast for this:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
...
end
class SignUp < ActiveType::Record[User]
...
end
user = User.find(1)
sign_up = ActiveType.cast(user, SignUp)
sign_up.is_a?(SignUp) # => true
This is basically like [ActiveRecord#becomes](http://apidock.com/rails/v4.2.1/ActiveRecord/Pers…
Use a global .gitignore file to ignore stuff from your machine
Sometimes you want git to ignore certain files that appear on your machine. You can do this in 3 ways:
- Per project, in the project's
.gitignorefile - Per project, in a local exclude file
- Globally on your machine
Downsides of per-project .gitignore entries
While it might be tempting to set it per project (other devs might benefit from it), you
- need to do it each time for every project
- "pollute" a project's
.gitignorefile with stuff…