Sync confidential files between unixes using cloud storage and encfs

Note: You might also want to check out BoxCryptor which does pretty much the same, and is supported across many more platforms. I just didn't want to use Dropbox...

I use Ubuntu One to automatically sync confidential files between my machines. The encryption is done via encfs, which is a file-based encryption that simply puts encrypted versions of files from one folder into another. This is well-suited for cloud storage, since it allows syncing single files, not whole crypt containers.

Recipe

I'll ass...

Bundle capistrano

Capistrano recently had some API changes that can results in deploys not working when running with old deploy.rb files.

So let's bundle it. Put capistrano into your Gemfile, like this:

# Gemfile

group :deploy do
  gem 'capistrano'
  gem 'capistrano_colors'
end

It's possible you need to do a bundle update net-ssh to get things running.

Now double check that all your custom hooks are actually still called. One candidate might be an after deploy:symlink hook that has been renamed into `after deploy:creat...

How to use pessimistic row locks with ActiveRecord

When requests arrive at the application servers simultaneously, weird things can happen. Sometimes, this can also happen if a user double-clicks on a button, for example.

This often leads to problems, as two object instances are modified in parallel maybe by different code and one of the requests writes the results to the database.

In case you want to make sure that only one of the requests "wins", i.e. one of the requests is fully executed and completed while the other one at least has to wait for the first request to be completed, you ha...

Aspect Oriented Programming in Ruby

Slides presenting ways to integrate the ideas of Aspect-Oriented Programming in Ruby.

Outline

  • Why Aspect-Oriented Programming?
  • AOP in Java and AspectJ (a Review).
  • AOP in Ruby.
    • What you can do today.
    • Example AOP-isms in Ruby on Rails.
  • Aspect-Oriented Design.
  • The AOP Promise for Tomorrow.

You cannot use :before or :after on img in CSS

Though the W3C even gives it as an example, no browser actually supports this CSS:

img:before {
  content: "something";
}

Browsers will simply not render anything when doing that on images (Fun fact: It worked in an older version of Opera but got dropped).\
The same applies to the :after pseudo-element.

This makes me sad.

You can try using jQuery instead.

Use a special version of Chrome for selenium (and another for your everyday work)

Sometimes you need a special version of chrome because it has some features you need for testing, like in this card. You do not need to use that Version apart from tests, because you can tweek selenium to use a special version that you set in your environment:

# features/support/chrome.rb
require "selenium/webdriver"

Capybara.register_driver :chrome320x480 do |app|
  
  if driver_path = ENV["CHROME_SELENIUM_BIN...

Set the accept-language of Chrome in selenium tests

You can set the resolution and user agent used in selenium tests with chrome with the method described in this card, but you can also set the accept-language and other profile settings if you do this:

# features/support/chrome.rb
require "selenium/webdriver"


Capybara.register_driver :chrome320x480 do |app|
  args = []
  args << "--window-...

Run Chrome in a specific resolution or user agent with Selenium

When you want to test how an web-application reacts in a specific resolution, you can set up a specific Selenium driver for some tests:

 Before('@chrome320x480') do
     Capybara.current_driver = :chrome320x480
 end

 After('@chrome320x480') do
    Capybara.use_default_driver 
 end

You can use either chromium or chrome beta (as of 2012.05 the Version "19.0.1084.41 beta" works), or any other member of the family. It only needs to supports the "--window-size" command-line switch. [See this list](http://peter.sh...

How to access a dmcrypt-encrypted partition from outside your system

This is for you when you want to mount a dmcrypt encrypted partition manually, e.g. from a live CD.

First, open the dmcrypted partition (You need to provide some name. It may, but does not need to, be your LVM group name):

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda5 some_name

Since your encryption container most likely contains an LVM group (root + swap for example), enable the logical volume manager (replace LVM_NAME with your volume group's name):

vgchange -ay LVM_NAME

After that, you can your access (mount, [fsck](https://makandrac...

Authorize allowed values with assignable_values

All our projects have enum-like requirements like this:

  • An attribute value must be included in a given set of values.
  • The list of allowed values must be retrievable in order to render <select> boxes.
  • Each value has a humanized label.
  • Sometimes there is a default value.

Most of the time, this requirement is also needed:

  • The list of assignable values depends on the user who is currently signed in.

In our past projects there are many different solutions for these related requirements, e.g. ChoiceTrait, methods like `available_...

Google Analytics: Changing the tracked URL path

By default, Google Analytics tracks the current URL for every request. Sometimes you will want to track another URL instead, for example:

  • When an application URL contains a secret (e.g. an access token)
  • When you want to track multiple URLs under the same bucket
  • When you want to track interactions that don't have a corresponding URL + request (e.g. a Javascript button or a PDF download)

Luckily the Analytics code snippet allows you to freely choose what path is being tracked. Simple change this:

ga('send', 'pageview');

......

Why has_many :through associations can return the same record multiple times

An association defined with has_many :through will return the same record multiple times if multiple join models for the same record exist (a n:m relation). To prevent this, you need to add ->{ uniq } as second argument to has_many (below Rails 4 it is a simple option: has_many :xyz, :uniq => true).

Example

Say you have an Invoice with multiple Items. Each Item has a Product:

class Invoice < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :items
  has_many :products, :through => :items
end

class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
  ...

Issue with an escaped "equals" sign in the development log email representation

An = is represented by =3D in the log file.

I got confused by the leading 3D which is not part of the token, you can see in the following example:

Hallo Max!

Danke f=C3=BCr deinen Beitrag. Bitte best=C3=A4tige deine Teilnahme, inde=
m du auf den folgenden Link klickst:

  http://localhost:3000/beitraege/13/confirm?token=3DEA7BB9DA73FF17AO

Viele Gr=C3=BC=C3=9Fe vom Team!

My token is actually only EA7BB9DA73FF17AO.

Fix warning: Cucumber-rails required outside of env.rb

After installing Bundler 1.1 you will get the following warning when running tests:

WARNING: Cucumber-rails required outside of env.rb. The rest of loading is being defered until env.rb is called.\
To avoid this warning, move 'gem cucumber-rails' under only group :test in your Gemfile

The warning is misleading because it has nothing to do with moving cucumber-rails into a :test group. Instead you need to change your Gemfile to say:

gem 'cucumber-rails', :require => false

Ruby blocks: Braces and do/end have different precedence

TL;DR {} binds stronger than do … end (as always in Ruby, special characters bind stronger than words)

Demo

✔️ Right way

names = ['bRUce', 'STaN', 'JOlIE']

# Blocks in braces are passed to the rightmost method
print names.map { |name| name.downcase }
print(names.map do |name| name.downcase end) # equivalent
=> ["bruce", "stan", "jolie"]

❌ Wrong way

Avoid the examples below, as you pass at least one block to print and not to the enumerator.

names = ['bRUce', 'STaN', 'JOlIE'] 

# Blocks in do…end ar...

MySQL shell: Vertical vs horizontal layout

When talking to your MySQL server via a mysql shell, you can terminate queries by ; or \G -- the latter gives you a vertical output.

You know this:

mysql> SELECT * FROM users;
+----+---------+---------------------+-----------------+
| id | name    | email               | greeting        |
+----+---------+---------------------+-----------------+
|  1 | Alice   | alice@example.com   | Hello world!    |
|  2 | Bob     | bob@example.com     | Hello universe! |
|  3 | Charlie | charlie@example.com | Hi mom!    ...

Ruby: Making your regular expressions more readable with /x and alternative delimiters

The following two hints are taken from Github's Ruby style guide:

If your regular expression mentions a lot of forward slashes, you can use the alternative delimiters %r(...), %r[...] or %r{...} instead of /.../.

 %r(/blog/2011/(.*))
 %r{/blog/2011/(.*)}
 %r[/blog/2011/(.*)]

If your regular expression is growing complex, you can use the /x modifier to ignore whitespace and comments:

regexp = %r{
  start         # some text
  \s            # white space char
  (group)    ...

Show MySQL process list without sleeping connections

Usually you don't need to, but when you want to see which queries your MySQL server currently needs to handle (and if there are locks, etc), you could say SHOW PROCESSLIST in a MySQL shell.

Unfortunately, SHOW PROCESSLIST does not allow filtering. When you are on MySQL ≥ 5.1.7, do this instead:

SELECT * FROM information_schema.processlist WHERE command != 'Sleep' ORDER BY id;

That also allows you to only show some values or order differently, like so:

SELECT user, time, state, info FROM information_schema.processlist WHERE co...

Change how Capybara sees or ignores hidden elements

Short version

  • Capybara has a global option (Capybara.ignore_hidden_elements) that determines whether Capybara sees or ignores hidden elements.
  • Prefer not to change this global option, and use the :visible option when calling page.find(...). This way the behavior is only changed for this one find and your step doesn't have confusing side effects.
  • Every Capybara driver has its own notion of "visibility".

Long version

Capybara has an option (Capybara.ignore_hidden_elements) to configure the default...

MySQL shell: Enable UTF-8

When you do a script/dbconsole -p, your MySQL shell will already be using UTF-8. When you call it yourself using mysql, it may not be enabled.

You'll notice that when you get ASCII salad and/or question marks instead of special characters. \
Example: Hlavn� m?sto Praha instead of Hlavní město Praha.

You need to manually switch on UTF-8, in the MySQL console:

SET NAMES 'utf8';

Capybara: Test that a string is visible as static text

This is surprisingly difficult when there is a <textarea> with the same text on the page, but you really want to see the letters as static text in a <p> or similiar.

The step definition below lets you say:

Then I should see the text "foo"

You should not look too closely at the step definition because when you see the light, it will blind you.

Then /^I should see the text "(.*?)"$/ do |text|
  elements = page.all('*', :text => text).reject { |element| element.tag_name == 'textarea' || element.all('*', :text => text...

Make your Rails console (and irb) output better readable

Pour color on your Rails console with awesome_print. Turn confusing long strings into formatted output. Have objects and classes laid out clearly whenever you need it.

Put gem 'awesome_print', :group => :development into your Gemfile. Now on the Rails console you have the command ap that will give you a colored, formatted output of whatever you pass it. See the example output of the User class below.

For customization visit the repository on Github.

![awesome_print.png](https://makan...

responsive.is

Online tool to test how a site behaves in popular desktop, tablet and phone resolutions.

Spec "content_for" calls in helpers

This only applies to RSpec below version 1.3.2. The issue has been fixed in RSpec 1.3.2, and most likely RSpec 2 and later versions.


When you have a helper that calls content_for and want to check its behavior you should probably write a feature instead. If you still want to do it, mind the following.

Consider this helper:

module LayoutHelper
  def title(string)
    content_for :title, string
    string
  end
end

Somewhere in the layout we'd then say something like this: `<%= yield :title %...</p>