How to push to Git without running CI on GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or Travis CI
If a project ist configured to spawn CI runners for tests or deployment when pushing to the Repo, a habit of pushing WIP commits regularly may conflict with that.
Here are two solutions that allow you to keep pushing whenever you feel like it.
Special commit message
To skip a CI run, simply add [ci skip] or [skip ci] to your commit message. Example:
git commit -m "wip authentication [ci skip]"
Git push options (GitLab)
In addition to that, GitLab CI supports Git push options. Instead of changing your commit message, ...
Delivering Carrierwave attachments to authorized users only
Preparation
To attach files to your records, you will need a new database column representing the filename of the file. To do this, add a new migration (rails g migration <name>) with the following content:
class AddAttachmentToNotes < ActiveRecord::Migration[6.0]
def change
add_column :notes, :attachment, :string
end
end
Don't forget to rename the class and change the column details to fit your purpose. Run it.
1) Deliver attachments through Rails
The first way is to store your Carrierwave attachments not ...
Capybara: Preventing server errors from failing your test
When your Rails application server raises error, Capybara will fail your test when it clears the session after the last step. The effect is a test that passes all steps, but fails anyway.
Capybara's behavior will help you to detect and fix errors in your application code. However, sometimes your application will explode with an error outside your control. Two examples:
- A JavaScript library references a source map in its build, but forgets to package the source map
- CarrierWave cleans up an upload or cache file after the record was delet...
E-mail deliverability
When your application is open for public sign up and sends out transactional e-mails to a large number of users, e-mail deliverability becomes an issue.
E-mail providers work hard to eliminate spam and have put in place relatively tight checks what kinds of emails they will accept, and from whom. To that end we use tools like mail-tester.com to make our mails as acceptable as possible. Unfortunately, there will always be providers that reject our e-mails for some reason or other, sometimes outside of our control.
For exa...
Parallelize Development Using Git Worktrees
You can use git worktree to manage multiple working trees attached to the same repository. But why should I use git worktree?
You can use more than one working tree to ...
... run tests while working on another branch
... compare multiple versions
... work on a different branch without disturbing your current branch
Creating a new working tree is as simple as creating a new branch. You only need to execute git worktree add <path> <branch>. When you are done, you can remove the working tree with git worktree remove <Worktree>...
Regular Expressions: Quantifier modes
When you repeat a subpattern with a *, + or {...} operator, you may choose between greedy, lazy and possessive modes.
Switching modes may affect the result and performance of your regular expressions. In the worst case, an ill-suited mode may make your regular expression so slow that it can DoS your application (Examples are the ActiveRecord's PostgreSQL CVE-2021-22880 or the [Cloudflare outage 2019](https://makandracards.com/makandra/77515-regular-expressions-excessive-backtracking...
How to list updateable dependencies with Bundler and Yarn
Bundler
bundle outdated [--filter-major|--filter-minor|--filter-patch]
Example output for bundle outdated --filter-major
Other examples
A useful flag is --strict as it will only list versions that are allowed by your Gemfile requirements (e.g. does not show rails update to 6 if your Gemfile has the line gem 'rails', '~>5.2').
I also experienced that doing upgrades per group (test, development) are easier to do. Thus --groups might also be helpful.
$ bundle...
Linux: How to make a terminal window title reflect the current path
By default, your terminal emulator (Gnome Terminal, Terminator, etc.) sets some kind of window title to reflect the shell type you are running (e.g. /bin/bash).
This is most often not too helpful, but you can change that from your shell.
To set a specific title, print an escape sequence like this:
echo -en "\033]0;Hello\a"
You can easily include the current path:
echo -en "\033]0;$(pwd)\a"
Or, to replace your home directory's part with a tilde:
echo -en "\033]0;$(pwd | sed -e "s;^$HOME;~;")\a"
Or,...
DNS debug tools
There are several tools for DNS debugging which offer you more or less information. Most of the time the more simple ones, like host oder nslookup will be sufficient.
host
simple DNS lookup utility.
>host heise.de
heise.de has address 193.99.144.80
heise.de has IPv6 address 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:302::
heise.de mail is handled by 10 relay.heise.de.
nslookup
query Internet domain name servers. Nslookup has two modes: interactive and non-interactive.
>nslookup heise.de
Server: 146.254.160.30
Address: 146.254.160.3...
Using the Truemail gem to validate e-mail addresses
The Truemail gem (not to be confused with truemail.io) allows validating email addresses, e.g. when users enter them into a sign-up form. It runs inside your application and does not depend on an external SaaS service.
Truemail supports different validation "layers":
- Regex validation: if the given address is syntactically valid
- DNS validation (called MX validation): if the given domain exists and can receive email
- SMTP validation: connects to the host received from DNS and starts a test d...
Git diff: Deemphasizing code that was only moved around
In long diffs, it can become impossible to spot small changes in larger blocks of moved code. This may be either a method that was moved from the top to the bottom of a file, or a long test file that was split in many.
Fortunately, Git offers a special highlighting mode that directs the reader's attention to relevant code parts:
git diff --color-moved=dimmed-zebra
It will dim lines that were moved around without changes, and highlight changed lines.
To easily use dimmed-zebra mode, configure an alias:
# ~/.gitconfig
[alias]
...
Capybara: Running tests with headless Chrome
Headless Chrome is a way to run the Chrome browser without a visible window.
Configuring Capybara
Configure the Capybara driver like this:
Capybara.register_driver :selenium do |app|
options = Selenium::WebDriver::Chrome::Options.new
options.add_argument('--disable-infobars')
options.add_emulation(device_metrics: { width: 1280, height: 960, touch: false })
unless ENV.key?('NO_HEADLESS')
options.add_argument('--headless')
o...
How to negate scope conditions in Rails
Sometimes you want to find the inverse of an ActiveRecord scope. Depending on what you want to achieve, this is quite easy with Rails 7, and a bit more complicated with Rails 6 and below, or when the inverse scope may contain NULL values.
There are two different ways of "inverting a scope":
As an example, consider the following model.
class User < ApplicationRecord
scope :admins, -> { where(role: ['admin', 'superuser']) }
# ...
end
Mathematical NOT
You know this one from basic set theory. It proces the "complementary s...
Ruby: How to determine the absolute path relative to a file
If you want to get the path of a file relative to another, you can use the expand_path method with either the constant __FILE__ or the method __dir__. Read this card for more information about __FILE__ and __dir__.
Example
Structure:
.
├── bin
│ ├── format_changelog
├── CHANGELOG.md
bin/format_changelog:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
changelog_path = ? # How to get the path to ../CHANGELOG.md independent of the working dir of the caller
changelog = File.read(changelog_path)
# ... further actions...
CSS variables aka CSS Custom Properties
CSS variables are very different from preprocessor variables. While preprocessors use variables to compile a static piece of CSS, CSS custom properties are a reactive (i.e. live) part of the styles. Think of them like usual CSS properties that cascade, but have:
- A special syntax: CSS variables always start with a double-dash (
--color) - No inherent meaning: Defining a CSS variable will not change any styles in itself
- A special functionality: CSS variables can be used within the values of other properties, including CSS variables...
Controlling issue grouping in Sentry
When you use Sentry to monitor exceptions, an important feature is Sentry's error grouping mechanism. It will aggregate similar error "events" into one issue, so you can track and monitor it more easily. Grouping is especially important when you try to silence certain errors.
It is worth understanding how Sentry's grouping mechanism works.
The default grouping mechanism
The exact algorithm has changed over time, and Sentry will keep using the algorithm t...
Rails: How to get the ordered list of used middlewares
Rails middlewares are small code pieces that wrap requests to the application. The first middleware gets passed the request, invokes the next, and so on. Finally, the application is invoked, builds a response and passes it back to the last middleware. Each middleware now returns the response until the request is answered. Think of it like Russian Dolls, where each middleware is a doll and the application is the innermost item.
You can run rake middleware to get the ordered list of used middlewares in a Rails application:
$> rake midd...
PostgreSQL: How to use with_advisory_lock to prevent race conditions
If you want to prevent that two processes run some code at the same time you can use the gem with_advisory_lock.
What happens
- The thread will wait indefinitely until the lock is acquired.
- While inside the block, you will exclusively own the advisory lock.
- The lock will be released after your block ends, even if an exception is raised in the block.
This is usually required if there is no suitable database row to lock on.
Example
You want to generate a...
Sentry: Different ways of deferring notifications for an issue
We use Sentry to be informed about different kinds of issues. One of the key features is that you are not getting spammed if many errors of the same kind occur in a small timespan.
If an issue pops up the usual workflow is to fix the code and mark the issue as "resolved" in Sentry. Only new or resolved issues trigger another email notification when they are proxied through Sentry.
This workflow does not fit well for issues we cannot fix, e.g. when consuming an external API that is sometimes down. In such cases you ...
Automatically validating dependency licenses with License Finder
"Open-source software (OSS) is great. Anyone can use virtually any open-source code in their projects."
Well, it depends. Licenses can make things difficult, especially when you are developing closed-source software. Since some OSS licenses even require the employing application to be open-sourced as well (looking at you, GPL), you cannot use such software in a closed-source project.
To be sure on this, we have developed a project-level integration of Pivotal's excellent [license_finder](https:/...
ActiveRecord: String and text fields should always validate their length
If you have a :string or :text field, you should pair it with a model validation that restricts its length.
There are two motivations for this:
- In modern Rails, database types
:stringand:textno longer have a relevant size limit. Without a validation a malicious user can quickly exhaust the hard drive of your database server. - In legacy Rails (or database schemas migrated from legacy Rails), database types
:stringand:texthad a database-side length constraint. When the user enters a longer string, the ActiveRecord valida...
Shorthand function properties in ES6
Here is an ES5 object literal with two string properties and a function property:
let user = {
firstName: 'Max',
lastName: 'Muster',
fullName: function() { return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName }
}
user.fullName() // => 'Max Muster'
In ES6 we can define a function property using the following shorthand syntax:
let user = {
firstName: 'Max',
lastName: 'Muster',
fullName() { return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName }
}
user.fullName() // => 'Max Muster'
We can also define a gette...
HTTP Client in RubyMine
RubyMine has a HTTP Client that can be useful to test web APIs.
Just create a .http scratch file an write your request in it.
The request can then be executed with the "Run all requests in File" button above the file.
Some alternatives:
The format for request is like this:
Method Request-URI HTTP-Version
Header-field: Heade...
Error handling in DOM event listeners
When an event listener on a DOM element throws an error, that error will be silenced and not interrupt your program.
In particular, other event listeners will still be called even after a previous listener threw an error. Also the function that emitted the event (like element.dispatchEvent() or up.emit()) will not throw either.
In the following example two handlers are listening to the foo event. The first handler crashes, th...