How to get information about a gem (via CLI or at runtime from Ruby)

When you need information about a gem (like version(s) or install path(s)), you can use the gem binary from the command line, or the Gem API inside a ruby process at runtime.

gem binary (in a terminal)

You can get some information about a gem by running gem info <gem name> in your terminal.

Example:

$ gem info irb

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

irb (1.4.1, 1.3.5)
    Author: Keiju ISHITSUKA
    Homepage: https://github.com/ruby/irb
    Licenses: Ruby, BSD-2-Clause
    Installed at (1.4.1): /home/arne/.rbenv/versions/3.0.3/lib/ruby/g...

RSpec: Expect one of multiple matchers to match

RSpec let's you chain a matcher with .or. The expectation will then pass if at least one matcher matches:

expect(color).to eq("red").or eq("green")

Real-world example

A real-world use case would be to test if the current page has a button with the label "Foo". There are many ways to render a button with CSS:

<input type="button" value="Foo">
<input type="submit" value="Foo">
<button>Foo</button>

We cannot express it with a single have_css() matcher, since we need the { text: 'Foo' } optio...

Before you make a merge request: Checklist for common mistakes

Merge requests are often rejected for similar reasons.

To avoid this, before you send a merge request, please confirm that your code ...

Thread-safe collections in Ruby

When using threads, you must make your code thread-safe. This can be done by either locking (mutexes) all data shared between threads, or by only using immutable data structures. Ruby core classes like String or Array are not immutable.

There are several gems providing thread-safe collection classes in Ruby.

concurrent-ruby

The concurrent-ruby gem provides thread-safe versions of Array and Hash:

sa = Concurrent::Array.new # supports standard Array.new forms
sh = Co...

JavaScript: Working with Query Parameters

tl;dr: Use the URLSearchParams API to make your live easier if you want to get or manipulate query parameters (URL parameters).

URLSearchParams API

The URLSearchParams API is supported in all major browsers except IE 11.

It offers you a bunch of useful methods:

  • URLSearchParams.append() - appends a query parameter
  • URLSearchParams.delete() - deletes the specified query parameter
  • URLSearchParams.get() - returns the value of the specified query parameter
  • `URLSearchP...

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...

ActionMailer: Previewing mails directly in your email client

In Rails, we usually have a mailer setup like this:

class MyMailer < ActionMailer::Base

  def newsletter
    mail to: 'receiver@host.tld',
      from: 'sender@host.tld',
      subject: 'My mail'
  end

end

If you want to preview your mail in the browser, you can use the Action Mailer Preview. To inspect the mail directly in your email client, just create an .eml file and open it with your client:

mail = MyMailer.newsletter
Fil...

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/...

Rails routing: Using constraints to avoid "Missing template" errors

You can use constraints in your routes.rb to avoid getting errors when wrong routes are called. Instead, the user will see a 404.

If you want multiple routes to use the same constraint you can use the block syntax:

constraints(format: 'html') do
  resources :pages
  resources :images
end

If you want constraints only on certain routes, you can do:

get '/users/account' => 'users#account', constraints: { format: 'html' }

Note: You can also avoid this error through [format constraints in your controllers](/makandra...

Generating an Entity Relationship Diagram for your Rails application

This card explains how to generate an entity relationship diagram for your Rails application.
We also show how to limit your ERD to a subset of models, e.g. models inside a namespace.

Generating a full ERD

Option A: RubyMine

  1. Right-click anywhere in your project tree
  2. In the context menu, find the "Diagrams" menu item at/near the bottom
  3. Inside, choose "Show diagram" → "Rails Model Dependency Diagram"
  4. A new tab will open with the diagram inside. You can modify it there, and export it as an image.

Option B: Use rails-e...

Components: Dynamically growing input field's height to fit content

Sometimes you will need an input field which wraps content and grows in height as soon as content gets longer than the input fields width.
There is no way to get a "normal" string input field to wrap as desired, but there are other ways.

Here is one pretty easy solution to get what you want:

Step 1

Let your input became a text area with one row.

f.text_area(:name, rows: 1, autosize: '') 

Step 2

Include the autosize library in your project

yarn add autosize

And make your...

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/...

Jasmine: Testing if two arrays contain the same elements

When the order matters:

expect(array1).toEqual(array2)

Regardless of order:

expect(array1).toEqual(jasmine.arrayWithExactContents(array2))

Ignoring extra elements:

expect(array1).toEqual(jasmine.arrayContaining(array2))

Version 5 of the Ruby Redis gem removes Redis.current

Redis.current will be removed without replacement in redis-rb 5.0.
Version 4.6.0 adds deprecation warnings for Redis.current and Redis.current=:

`Redis.current=` is deprecated and will be removed in 5.0.

If your application still uses Redis.current, you can only fix it by no longer using it. Here is how.

Redis.new when you need it

You can easily instantiate a Redis client when you need it.

There is probably already a constant like REDIS_URL that you use to configure Sidekiq or similar. So just use that one.

``...

Matching unicode characters in a Ruby (1.9+) regexp

On Ruby 1.9+, standard ruby character classes like \w, \d will only match 7-Bit ASCII characters:

"foo" =~ /\w+/   # matches "foo"
"füü" =~ /\w+/   # matches "f", ü is not 7-Bit ASCII

There is a collection of character classes that will match unicode characters. From the documentation:

  • /[[:alnum:]]/ Alphabetic and numeric character
  • /[[:alpha:]]/ Alphabetic character
  • /[[:blank:]]/ Space or tab
  • /[[:cntrl:]]/ Control character
  • /[[:digit:]]/ Digit
  • /[[:graph:]]/ Non-blank character (excludes spaces...

Carrierwave: How to attach files in tests

Attaching files to a field that is handled by Carrierwave uploaders (or maybe any other attachment solution for Rails) in tests allows different approaches. Here is a short summary of the most common methods.

You might also be interested in this card if you see the following error in your test environment:

CarrierWave::FormNotMultipart:
You tried to assign a String or a Pathname to an uploader, for security reasons, this is not allowed.
If this is a file upload, please check that your upload form is multipart encoded.

Factor...

How to access Chrome Devtools when running JavaScript tests via CLI

While we are used to run our JavaScript tests on a test page within our Browser, it's also possible to run them on the command line with NodeJS. I think that's actually the most common way to run JS tests.

Given a Vue project that uses Jest (via vue-cli-service) with the following package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "test": "vue-cli-service test:unit --testMatch='**/tests/**/*.test.js' --watch"
  },
}

This allows us to run J...

Jest: How to clear the cache

I recently was in a weird situation where my (Jest/CLI) tests were referencing a function that was no longer part of my code - I had just refactored it.

Apparently Jest has some kind of cache that caused the issue, running npx jest --clearCache solved it for me.

RSpec: You can super into parent "let" definitions

RSpec's let allows you to super into "outside" definitions, in parent contexts.

Example:

describe '#save' do
  subject { described_class.new(attributes) }
  let(:attributes) { title: 'Example', user: create(:user) }

  it 'saves' do
    expect(subject.save).to eq(true)
  end

  context 'when trying to set a disallowed title' do
    let(:attributes) { super().merge(title: 'Hello') } # <==

    it 'will not save' do
      expect(subject.save).to eq(false)
    end
  end
end

I suggest you don't make a habit of using this regula...

Testing HTTPS with badssl.com

Website that offers lots of different kinds of HTTPS configurations, bad or good or complicated.

They also offer a dashboard to check if your browser's HTTPS handling works as expected (which might be compromised e.g. due to security products or enterprise proxy servers).

Recommended Git workflow for feature branches

This is a guide on how to effectively use Git when working on a feature branch. It is designed to get out of your way as much as possible while you work, and ensure you end up with clean commits in the end.

We assume you are the only person working on this branch. We also assume the branch has never been "partially" merged into master.

You want to start a feature branch

git checkout master
git checkout -b my-feature-branch
git push -u origin my-feature-branch

You've added code that works ind...

Integrating ESLint

Introduction

To ensure a consistent code style for JavaScript code, we use ESLint. The workflow is similar to integrating rubocop for Ruby code.

1. Adding the gem to an existing code base

You can add the following lines to your package.json under devDependencies:

  "devDependencies": {
    "eslint": "^8.7.0",
    "eslint-config-standard": "^16.0.3",
    "eslint-plugin-import": "^2.25.4",
    "eslint-plugin-node"...

Git: rebase dependent feature branch after squash

This card will show you how to use git rebase --onto without confusion.

Use case:

You've got two feature branches (one and two), where two depends on one. Now commits of branch one have changed after you branched two from it (i.e. after code review the commits of branch one are squashed). Thus the commit history of branch one has changed. Branch two's history however didn't change.

Solution:

To make the branches share the same commit history again you will have to rebase and replay (attach) the a...

Jasmine: using async/await to write nice asynchronous specs

Jasmine has long standing support for writing asynchronous specs. In days gone by we used the done callback to achieve this, but these days it is possible to write much more readable specs.

Async specs

As a first example, say we want to check that some form disables the submit button while working.

// bad (how we used to do it)

beforeEach(() => {
  this.form = setupMyForm()
  this.submitButton = findTheSubmitButton()
})

it('disables the submit button while working', (done) => {
  expect(this.submitButton.disabled).toBe(false)
...