Transporting blank values in URL queries

URLs can transport key/value pairs ("parameters") using this syntax:

/path?foo=bar

If the value is blank, mind these subtle differences:

URL Meaning
/path?foo= Parameters have a key foo. Its value is an empty string.
/path?foo Parameters have a key foo. Its value is null.
/path Parameters have no key foo.

How to build a fully custom TinyMCE 5 dialog

TinyMCE is a WYSIWYG editor which is quite customizable.


  1. Add a custom button to the tinyMCE toolbar and tell tinyMCE to open a dialog with the route to your dialog's view.
tinymce.init({
  // ...
  toolbar: 'myCustomButton',
  setup: function(editor) {
      editor.ui.registry.addButton('myCustom Button', {
        ...

How to test inside iframes with cucumber / capybara

When testing with Cucumber / Caypbara, iframes are ignored, so you can't interact with them.

To interact with your iframe, you have to explicitly tell your driver to use it.
You can reference your iframe either through it's id, or if none given, by it's number:

When /^(.*?) inside the (.*?). iframe$/ do |nested_step, frame_number|
  page.within_frame(frame_number.to_i) do
    step nested_step
  end
end

When /^(.*?) inside the (.*?). iframe:$/ do |nested...

Ruby < 2.4: Downcasing or upcasing umlauts

Using .downcase or .upcase on strings containing umlauts does not work as expected in Ruby versions before 2.4. It leaves the umlauts unchanged:

"Über".downcase
=> "Über"

"Ärger".downcase
=> "Ärger"

The very same applies for french accents (Thanks Guillaume!):

"Être ou ne pas être, telle est la question".downcase
=> "Être ou ne pas être, telle est la question"

Obviously, this leads to problems when comparing strings:

"Über".downcase == "über"
=> false

In Rails you can use ActiveSupports' [multib...

Ruby: How to keep split delimiter (separate, or as part of substrings)

Ruby's String#split returns an array of substrings from the given string. Usually, this is missing the split characters:

>> 'user@example.com'.split('@')
=> ["user", "example.com"]

If you want to join those parts later on, you might know the split character and can just use it to join explicitly.
But if you split by a regular expression (for a set of split characters) that information is lost:

>> 'user@example.com'.split(/[@\.]/)
=> ["user", "example", "com"]

You can use a capture group to make those characters ...

SSHKit 1.9.0 failure for Capistrano deploy

SSHKit 1.9.0 might fail with the following error, when trying to deploy a Rail application. Upgrading the gem to version 1.21.0 fixed the issue.

Traceback (most recent call last):
	17: from /home/user/.rbenv/versions/2.5.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.5.0/gems/sshkit-1.9.0/lib/sshkit/runners/parallel.rb:12:in `block (2 levels) in execute'
	16: from /home/user/.rbenv/versions/2.5.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.5.0/gems/sshkit-1.9.0/lib/sshkit/backends/abstract.rb:29:in `run'
	15: from /home/user/.rbenv/versions/2.5.0/lib/ruby/gems/2.5.0/gems/sshkit-1.9....

Whenever requires you to set the application attribute in the Capistrano config

Whenever requires you to set the application attribute in your Capistrano configuration. Otherwise your cronjobs are created multiple times.

Example entry in config/deploy.rb:

set :application, 'some-app' # allows "set :whenever_identifier, ->{ "#{fetch(:application)}_#{fetch(:stage)}" }" to work as expected

Good

Then the crontab -l output will look like this:

# Begin Whenever generated tasks for: som...

HowVideo.works

This is an informational site about video and how it works. We started by talking about Playback, next we added content about Delivery. Stay tuned for more about Processing and Capture.

Missing certificates for rubygems and bundler in Ruby 1.8.7

Using Ruby 1.8.7 you will not be able to use the maximum versions Rubygems 1.8.30 and Bundler 1.17.3 with https://rubygems.org/ anymore. This is a result of a server certificate on December 5th, 2020. The resulting errors will look like following:

  • TypeError: can't modify frozen object
  • Could not verify the SSL certificate for https://rubygems.org/*
  • Bundler::Fetcher::CertificateFailureError: Could not verify the SSL certificate for https://index.rubygems.org/versions.
  • `Error fetching data: hostname was not m...

A few recent CSS properties

  • Feature Queries (Edge 12+): Similar to @media queries, @supports blocks can be scoped to browsers that support a given declaration. There is CSS.supports() to do the equivalent in Javascript.

  • backdrop-filter (Edge 17+, but not FF): Applying filters to what is visible through an element.

  • [touch-action](https://d...

liquidprompt: A full-featured & carefully designed adaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh

Liquid Prompt gives you a nicely displayed prompt with useful information when you need it. It shows you what you need when you need it. You will notice what changes when it changes, saving time and frustration. You can even use it with your favorite shell – Bash or zsh.

liquidprompt Examples

Configuring Webpacker deployments with Capistrano

When deploying a Rails application that is using Webpacker and Capistrano, there are a few configuration tweaks that optimize the experience.

Using capistrano-rails

capistrano-rails is a Gem that adds Rails specifics to Capistrano, i.e. support for Bundler, assets, and migrations. While it is designed for Asset Pipeline (Sprockets) assets, it can easily be configured for Webpacker. This brings these features to the Webpacker world:

  • Automatic removal of expired assets
  • Manifest backups

How to remove entries from the bash history

Sometimes you accidentally generate entries in the bash history that you do not want to have there (e.g. commands with credentials).
Here's how to remove single entries.

You can look at the bash history with the history command.
To see e.g. the last 5 entries, use history | tail -n 5:

>history | tail -n 5
 1994  my-secret-command
 1995  cd xyz-mnt/
 1996  ls
 1997  cd appliance/
 1998  cd ..

Each entry has a number. You can use that to delete it: history -d 1994. Note that as you delete entries, the numbers of the following...

How to have a target=_blank link open with DevTools open

In the tab where you need it, open Chrome DevTools with F12, open settings with F1, scroll down to the "Global" section and check "Auto-open DevTools for popups".

When you follow a link with target=_blank within that tab, DevTools will be open and you can inspect e.g. request headers.

How to fix: Pasting in IRB 1.2+ is very slow

IRB 1.2 (shipped with Ruby 2.7, but works on 2.5+) brings pretty syntax highlighting and multiline cursor navigation. However, pasting longer contents is incredibly slow. You can fix that by disabling said features. [1]

Ruby 3.0.0-pre2 solved the issue (however, the fix does not appear to be included in IRB 1.2.6, it must be Ruby itself).

Option 1:

Add a command line flag when opening an IRB:

irb --nomultiline

This also works on modern Rails...

Variable fonts for web developers

This card is mainly an explanation how variable fonts work in CSS, not necessarily a recommendation to actually use them.

What is a variable font?

Designing and rendering fonts are two highly complex topics. For an arbitrary text to appear properly on your screen, its font must be created multiple times for different "settings" like stroke width (boldness) and style (e.g. italic).

Now as web developers, we usually ship these variants of the same font via multiple @font-faces of the same font-family:

@font-face
  font-family...

Improving browser rendering performance

As the web is being used for more and more tasks, expectations rise. Not only should web pages offer rich interaction, they must be responsive in both size and interaction.

This imposes a paradoxon that needs to be solved by building performing applications. It's not enough any more to have your web site do crazy stuff, it is also required to do it crazy fast. This card is intended to give you an introduction to this emerging aspect of web development.

Read this introductory [performance study on Pinterest](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...

Vortrag: Elasticsearch Grundlagen und Rails-Integration mit searchkick

Was ist Elastic?

  • Suchmaschine, basierend auf Apache Lucene
  • größtenteils Open-Source
  • einige kommerzielle Features ("Elastic Stack", früher "X-Pack")
    • Zugriffsrechte (bis vor kurzen)
    • Monitoring
    • Reporting
    • Graph-Unterstützung
    • Machine Learning
  • REST-Api (JSON über HTTP)

Grundlagen

Elastic antwortet per Default auf Port 9200

http GET :9200
{
  "name": "ntK2ZrY",
  "cluster_name": "elasticsearch",
  "cluster_uuid": "Bbc-ix5bQZij5vfFU29-Cw",
  "version": {
    "number": "6.7.1",
    "build_flavor": "...

Check that an element is hidden via CSS with Spreewald

If you have content inside a page that is hidden by CSS, the following will work with Selenium, but not when using the Rack::Test driver. The Selenium driver correctly only considers text that is actually visible to a user.

Then I should not see "foobear"

This is because the Rack::Test driver does not know if an element is visible, and only looks at the DOM.

Spreewald offers steps to check that an element is hidden by CSS:

Then "foo" should be hidden

You can also check that an el...

Minidusen: Filtering associated records

Minidusen lets you find text in associated records.

Assume the following model where a Contact record may be associated with a Group record:

class Contact < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :group

  validates_presence_of :name, :street, :city, :email
end

class Group < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :contacts

  validates_presence_of :name
end

We can filter contacts by their group name by joining the groups table and filtering on a joined column.
Note how the joined column is qualified as groups.name (rather than just `na...

Show/Hide Rubocop marking in RubyMine

If you have installed Rubocop in your project, RubyMine can show you Rubocop violations immediately in your editor. You probably already know this feature.

Example

Image

Enable/Disable marking

If your RubyMine does not show you any violations, although there are some, you may have to enable the setting first.

To do so, open Navigate -> Search Everywhere -> Actions (Or use the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + A) and type in "rubocop", then you should see some...

How to configure file watchers in RubyMine

Installation

You need to install the official plugin, it is not bundled with RubyMine by default.

Example: Setup a watcher to verify rubocop integrity

First, open Settings -> Tools -> File Watchers. Then, configure rubocop to check every change to the VCS:

Image

Note that the "program" argument must be part of your $PATH. I worked around this constraint by using b as a shim for bundle exec.

Resources

  • [File watchers documen...

Convert curl commands to ruby code

curl-to-ruby is a handy tool that converts your curl command to ruby code that uses the Net::HTTP library.

Example

curl -X POST -d
  "grant_type=password&email=email&password=password"
  localhost:3000/oauth/token

will output to:

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'

uri = URI.parse("http://localhost:3000/oauth/token")
request = Net::HTTP::Post.new(uri)
request.set_form_data(
  "email" => "email",
  "grant_type" => "password",
  "password" => "password",
)

req_options =...

Using ffmpeg as a HLS streaming server

A practical and detailed walk-through tutorial on using ffmpeg for live-streaming HLS, filled with real-world examples.

  • Using FFmpeg as a HLS streaming server (Part 1) – HLS Basics
  • Using FFmpeg as a HLS streaming server (Part 2) – Enhanced HLS Segmentation
  • Using FFmpeg as a HLS streaming server (Part 3) – Multiple Bitrates
  • Using FFmpeg as a HLS streaming server (Part 4) – Multiple Video Resolutions
  • Using FFmpeg as a HLS streaming server (Part 5) – Folder Structure
  • Using FFmpeg as a HLS streaming server (Part 6) – Independent Seg...