When using send_file (for example for attachments of any kind), make sure your application knows the correct mime types so that all browsers can handle the files. It is much more convenient for users if they can decide to open a file directly instead of having to save it first.

For Rails >= 3.2

Simply put your mime types in config/initializers/mime_types.rb. send_file will take care of everything else.

For Rails < 3.2

Put your mime types in config/initializers/mime_types.rb. Additionally, tell send_file to use them (for ex...

You can freeze any Ruby object to prevent further modification.

If you freeze an ActiveRecord and try to set an attribute you will an error like this:

can't modify frozen hash

This is because ActiveRecord delegates #freeze to its attributes hash.

You can unfreeze most Ruby objects by creating a shallow copy of the frozen object by calling #dup on it:

user = User.find(3)
user.freeze
unfrozen_user = user.dup

Notes for Rails 2 users
-----------------...

Rails comes with a Rake task notes that shows code comments that start with "TODO", "FIXME", or "OPTIMIZE".

While it's generally not good practice to leave them in your code (your work is not done until it's done), in larger projects you will occasionally have to use them as other parts of the application that you depend upon are not yet available.
To keep track of them, run rake notes. Its output looks something like this:

$ rake notes
app/controllers/fron...

If you want to grow a Ruby Array, you might find out about #fill but it is not really what you are looking for. [1]
For arrays of unknown size that you want to grow or shrink to a fixed size, you need to define something yourself. Like the following.

Array.class_eval do

  def in_size(expected_size, fill_with = nil)
    sized = self[0, expected_size]
    sized << fill_with while sized.size < expected_size
    sized
  end

end

Use it like this:

>> [1, 2, 3].in_size(5)
=> [1, 2, 3, nil, nil]

...

Code folding is a very useful feature to me. It gives me a quick overview over a file and keeps me from scolling like a hamster in its wheel.

Keyboard shortcuts:

Collapse/expand current code block

strg -/+

Collapse/expand the whole file

strg ctrl -/+

When diving into Cucumber features or huge Ruby classes, I usually collapse all and the gradually expand what I need.

To use a form model with devise, you can simply override #resource_class in a controller. A typical use case would be the registrations controller, as users will need some fields only on sign-up. Example:

class Frontend::Authentication::RegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController

  private

  def resource_class
    FrontendUser::AsSignUp # my decorator class, extending from FrontendUser
  end

end

List of cloud services and SaaS with a free tier for developers or that are generally free for open source software.

Fontawesome 4 ships with many useful CSS helper classes.

Enlarge Icon

Add fa-lg (133%), fa-2x, fa-3x, fa-4x or fa-5x.

Fixed-width Icon

Add fa-fw. Will give all icons the same width.

Styling Lists

Add fa-ul to a <UL> and fa fa-<icon name> fa-li to a <LI> to give the list items custom "bullets".

Bordered Icon

Add fa-border to get a border around the icon.

Spinning Icon

Add fa-spin to make any icon rotate. Suggested icons: fa-spinner, fa-refresh, fa-cog. Doesn't work in IE <10.

Ro...

Fontawesome 4 has introduced new naming conventions that make it easy to retrieve variants of a given icon.

The format is:

fa-[name]-[alt]-[shape]-[o]-[direction]

Note that this is a naming convention which doesn't imply there's an icon for any combination of tags.

name

The name of the icon, e.g. comment, print, bookmark etc. See the full list.

alt

An alternative icon.

shape

The icon inside a circle or square.

o

An outlined ...

There are some frontends available, but they all suck, are no longer maintained or are hard to install.

As a surprisingly comfortable alternative I have found a command line tool s3cmd:

sudo apt-get install s3cmd

When you run s3cmd the first time it will ask you for your access key ID and secret access key. This information is cached somewhere so you only need to write them once. To reconfigure later, call s3cmd --configure.

Once you're done setting up, s3cmd gives you shell-like commands like s3cmd ls or `s3cmd del som...

• Now supports RSpec 3 and Rails 4
• Drops support for state_machine, which has some issues with Rails 4 and isn't actively maintained

Awesome hack by Tim VanFosson:

<img src="some.jpg" onerror="this.src='alternative.jpg'" />

Instead of this:

Image.order('images.created_at DESC')

You can write this:

Image.order(created_at: :desc)

Not only do you not have to write SQL, you also get qualified column names (created_at becomes images.created_at) for free.

Multiple order criteria

To add secondary order criteria, use a hash with multiple keys and :asc / :desc values:

Image.order(title: :asc, created_at: :desc)

It's generally not trivial to change a datetime's seconds, minutes, etc in SQL. Here is how it works when speaking PostgreSQL.

Consider you have a timestamp column whose seconds you want to zero:

SELECT born_at FROM users;
       born_at
---------------------
 2015-05-01 13:37:42

You can the TO_CHAR function to convert date or time values into a string, and do your changes there:

SELECT TO_CHAR(born_at, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:00') FROM users;
       to_char
---------------------
 2015-05-01 13:37:00

...

Today I learned that Ruby on Rails has shipped with a built-in slug generator since Rails 2.2:

> "What Up Dog".parameterize
=> "what-up-dog" 

> "foo/bar".parameterize
=> "foo-bar" 

> "äöüß".parameterize
=> "aouss" 

Also see: Normalize characters in Ruby.

Clever hack using data-attributes to assign labels to cells.

It's still a massive duplication of code (labels), but better and more lightweight than most solutions I've seen for this surprisingly tricky problem.

File logger

If you need to log to a file you can use Ruby's Logger class:

require 'logger'

log = Logger.new('log/mylog.log')
log.info 'Some information'
log.debug 'Debugging hints'
log.error StandardError.new('Something went wrong')

Logger does a number of things well:

• Message type (info / debug / error) is logged
• Log entries are timestamped
• Writing log output is synchronized between threads
• Logged errors are printed with full backtraces

If you don't like the output format, you can define a custom formatter.

I ha...

Dusen (our search gem) is now capable of excluding words, phrases and qualified fields from search.
E.g. search for

• included -excluded
• "search this" -"not that"
• topic:"Yes" -topic:"No"

This will soon also work in makandra cards!

Reason

If you are using Coffeescript, it is likely to be the culprit. Since Coffeescript always returns the value of the last expression, it may return DOM nodes:

# coffeescript
scope.focus = ->
  element.focus()

# javascript
scope.focus = function() {
  return element.focus(); // wheee
}

If you e.g. use this function like this, the error will be raised:

<span ng-click="focus()">...</span>

Solution

By adding an explicit return value (e.g. return false), you can Coffees...

What if a complicated component comes along that is naturally modeled by multiple directives? This group of directives, as a whole, form a single self contained component. None of directives in the group can stand alone because they only make sense when used together; they collaborate; they are aware of each other and need to communicate with each other.

This post will discuss best practices for managing communication among collaborating directives and illustrate these practices with an example.

This is useful to kill processes like ruby my-script.rb:

pkill -f my-script.rb

With great power comes great responsibility.

Check your GPU state on chrome://gpu. If it reads "WebGL: Hardware accelerated" in the first list, you're set. Else:

1. Make sure chrome://flags/#disable-webgl is disabled (there should be a link "Enable")
2. If that does not help, try to additionally enable chrome://flags/#ignore-gpu-blacklist.

TL;DR You shouldn't call $scope.$apply() or $scope.$digest() inside a function that can be invoked by Angular – e.g. in an ngClick.

The linked Stackoverflow answer has a quick overview of techniques to apply changes to a scope. It also explains what might be wrong when you're getting the error $digest already in progress and gives some information that every Angular developer should know.