Unpoly 2.3.0 released
More control over loading Unpoly
- Unpoly can now be loaded with
<script defer>. This can be used to load your scripts without blocking the DOM parser. - Unpoly can now be loaded with
<script type="module">. This can be used deliver a modern JS build to modern browsers only. - Unpoly can now be booted manually Archive at a time of your choice. By default Unpoly boots automatically once the initial DOM is parsed.
- Event listeners registered with
up.on()Archive will no longer be called bef...
Unpoly 1.0.3 released
This maintenance release addresses two issues that were introduced in version 1.0.0:
- Unpoly can now be loaded with
<script defer>. This can be used to load your scripts without blocking the DOM parser. - Unpoly can now be loaded with
<script type="module">. This can be used deliver a modern JS build to modern browsers only.
Updated: RSpec: Tagging examples and example groups
Added:
Note that RSpec will, although it prints your tags inclusion/exclusion config before the suite run, ignore tag config when you pass it a spec file with a line number. That's even when the line number references a
describeorcontextblock, where only some examples should be excluded.
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....
How to use html_safe correctly
Back in the war, Rails developers had to manually HTML-escape user-supplied text before it was rendered in a view. If only a single piece of user-supplied text was rendered without prior escaping, it enabled
XSS attacks
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like injecting a <script> tag into the view of another user.
Because this practice was so error-prone, the
rails_xss plugin
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was developed and later integrated into Rails 3. rails_xss follows a different approach: Instead of relying...
Understanding database cleaning strategies in tests
TLDR: In tests you need to clean out the database before each example. Use :transaction where possible. Use :deletion for Selenium features or when you have a lot of MyISAM tables.
Understanding database cleaning
You want to clean out your test database after each test, so the next test can start from a blank database. To do so you have three options:
- Wrap each test in a transaction which is rolled back when you're done (through
DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :transactionor `config.use_transactional_fi...
MySQL: Careful when using database locks in transactions
We tend to use database transactions as a magic bullet to get rid of all our concurrency problems. When things get really bad, we might even throw in some locking mechanism, but then are usually done with it.
Unfortunately, transactions semantics in databases are actually very complicated, and chances are, your making some incorrect assumptions.
The MySQL innodb engine actually has [four different modes](ht...
CSS has a well-supported :empty selector
All browsers + IE9
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know the CSS :empty selector. It lets you hide an element when it has no content, i.e. not even white space.
(How to prevent whitespace in HAML) Archive
For instance, you have a badge displaying the number of unread messages in a red bubble with white text:
.unread-messages-bubble {
background-color: red;
border-radius: 10px;
padding: 10px;
color: white;
}
To hide that bubble entirely whe...
Rails: Talking to the database without instantiating ActiveRecord objects
Instantiating ActiveRecord objects comes expensive. To speed up things, you can choose a more direct way to talk to your database: the
ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::DatabaseStatements
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module.
Using the module and its methods is not suggested in the usual in-app workflow, as validations, callbacks, custom getters/setters etc. are ignored. However, for database-centered stuff like migrations, these fill the gap between writing pure SQL and full...
Howto: Elements to trigger Javascript
Often people need links which are not linked directly, but should trigger execution of javascript.
You can find a lot of workarounds for that:
-
<a href="#">Do something with js!</a>
This defines an empty anchor. This may lead the browser to let the page jump to the top when the link is clicked. This is probably not what you want. -
<a href="#!">Do something with js!</a>
This tells the browser to jump to an anchor!. It depends on the browser implementation what happens when an anchor with unknown target ist clicked. In the bes...
SSL/TLS - Typical problems and how to debug them
The linked article provides a description of commonly found problems with TLS and hints on debugging / solving them.
Don't forget: Automatically remove join records on has_many :through associations
Bad
# Given the following models
class Image < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :album_images
has_many :albums, through: :album_images
end
class Album < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :album_images
has_many :images, through: :album_images
end
# Join model
class AlbumImage < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :album
belongs_to :image
end
Destroying a record in this setup will only remove the record itself, and leave orphaned join records behind.
image = Image.last
image.destroy # removes only the `image` record,
...
RSpec < 2.11: ActiveRecord scopes must be loaded before using the "=~" matcher
To test whether two arrays have the same elements regardless of order, you can use the =~ matcher in RSpec < 2.11:
actual_array.should =~ expected_array
If either side is an ActiveRecord scope rather than an array, you should call to_a on it first, since =~ does not play nice with scopes:
actual_scope.to_a.should =~ expected_scope.to_a
If you use RSpec >= 2.11 we recommend using the match_array or contain_exactly matchers instead of =~.
Use the eq matcher only if the order of records matters.
CSS has a built-in clearfix
The need for clearfix hacks Archive has been greatly reduced since we could layout with Flexbox or CSS Grid.
However, when you do need a clearfix, there's no reason to use a hack anymore. You can just give the clearing container
display: flow-root
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.
This is supported by all browsers except IE11 Archive .