Notes posted to Ruby on Rails

This method has been moved

This method has been moved to ActiveSupport::Inflector#underscore

This method has been moved

This method has been moved to ActiveSupport::Inflector#dasherize

This method has been moved

This method has been moved to ActiveSupport::Inflector#constantize

This method has been moved

This method has been moved to ActiveSupport::Inflector#classify

This method has been moved

This method has been moved to ActiveSupport::Inflector#camelize

Regenerate the JavaScript after each RJS call

RISCfuture - I had trouble using sortable_element_js in my rjs (javascript error when I used options), but had success with page.sortable(‘the_id’,{a_hash_of_my_options}) in my rjs

Pluralize Without Count

Helper method that returns the word without the count.

application_helper.rb

def pluralize_without_count(count, noun, text = nil)
  if count != 0
    count == 1 ? "#{noun}#{text}" : "#{noun.pluralize}#{text}"
  end
end

Example usage:

_form.html.erb

<%= pluralize_without_count(item.categories.count, 'Category', ':') %>

ActiveRecord::Associations::ClassMethods#belongs_to

See ActiveRecord::Associations::ClassMethods#belongs_to

Will discard any order option

order_by(:created_at).find_each == FAIL!!!

class ActiveRecord::Base
  # normal find_each does not use given order but uses id asc
  def self.find_each_with_order(options={})
    raise "offset is not yet supported" if options[:offset]

    page = 1
    limit = options[:limit] || 1000

    loop do
      offset = (page-1) * limit
      batch = find(:all, options.merge(:limit=>limit, :offset=>offset))
      page += 1

      batch.each{|x| yield x }

      break if batch.size < limit
    end
  end
end

Attachment's name

Files attached in a standard way are shown up as “noname”. You can specify any name by using the :filename key:

attachment :content_type => "application/pdf",
           :filename     => "Othersheet.pdf",
           :body         => File.read("example.pdf")

:popup gotcha in IE

If your popup title contains spaces or escaped HTML characters, Internet Explorer (at least 6/7) will not pop up a new window but open the link in the existing browser window.

Add last_week to core_extensions

If you want to implement last_week as posted by Mange, save it as:

lib/core_extensions.rb

class Date
  def last_week(day = :monday)
    days_into_week = { :monday => 0, :tuesday => 1, :wednesday => 2, :thursday => 3, :friday => 4, :saturday => 5, :sunday => 6}
    result = (self - 7).beginning_of_week + days_into_week[day]
    self.acts_like?(:time) ? result.change(:hour => 0) : result
  end
end

And add to:

config/environment.rb

require 'core_extensions'

session expiration

If you need to set expiration period for sessions through all controllers in your application, simply add the following option to your config/intializers/session_store.rb file:

:expire_after => 60.minutes

If you need to set different expiration time in different controllers or actions, use the following code in action or some before_filter:

request.session_options = request.session_options.dup
request.session_options[:expire_after] = 5.minutes
request.session_options.freeze

Duplication of the hash is needed only because it is already frozen at that point, even though modification of at least :expire_after is possible and works flawlessly.

from - http://squarewheel.pl/posts/3

Passing an :object to the partial

For some reason the :object option is completely undocumented. Here’s an example usage.

# Renders the partial, making @new_person available through the local variable 'person'
render :partial => "person", :object => @new_person

(Credit goes to Catfish for the example, which I obtained from http://dev.rubyonrails.or/ticket/8518 )

sending an array of multiple options

To make sure that you’ll receive a array you should declare the name of the select with “[ ]” like that:

Example

<%= select_tag "users[]", options_for_select(@users.collect{|x| [x.name,x.id]}), {:multiple => :multiple, :size => 10} %>

How not to find an element

assert_select ‘div’, :count => 0

Passing parameters to custom formbuilders

If you implement your own formbuilder, the options passed are available as @options inside your formbuilder. If you want those configuration options passed to all builders in the fields_for sections, use the following code in your form builder:

def fields_for_with_options(record_or_name_or_array, *args, &block) options = args.extract_options! fields_for_without_options(record_or_name_or_array, *(args << options.merge(@options)), &block) end alias_method_chain :fields_for, :options

Usage:

form_for @my_object, :builder => MyCustomFormbuilder, :some_setting => :cool

Gotcha with class_inheritable_accessor and cloneing the attribute values

The key thing to note from post is that class_inheritable_accessor copies the value from the parent class at inherit time. So, if you are setting a default value of an array and doing something like the following you might end up with unintended results:

>> A.class_inheritable_foo << 'from a'
=> ["from a"]
>> B.class_inheritable_foo << 'from b'
=> ["from a", "from b"]
>> C.class_inheritable_foo << 'from c'
=> ["from a", "from b", "from c"]

However, if you use the form:

class << self
  def class_instance_foo
    @class_instance_processors ||= []
  end
end

The original values aren’t copied from the parent class when you reference the class for the first time:

>> A.class_instance_foo << 'from a'
=> ["from a"]
>> B.class_instance_foo << 'from b'
=> ["from b"]
>> C.class_instance_foo << 'from c'
=> ["from c"]

Auto-submitting select tag

If you want your form to be submitted when user selects something, use:

:onchange => "this.form.submit();"

For example:

select_tag "people", "<option>David</option>", :onchange => "this.form.submit();"

Using custom object via :object

Sometimes you need use select not only with @object as by default. For example if you have helper method like :

def select_parent_for(page)
  select(:page, :parent_id, Page.all.collect{|p| [p.name, p.id]} ) # <--- mistake!
end

In selected line you will use @page instead parameter of method page.

The options has parameter :object (and all form helpers has such parameter)

Solution:

def select_parent_for(page)
  select(:page, :parent_id, ..., :object => page)
end

Time in fixtures

When creating fixtures you should use this method to set created_at/updated_at timestamps correctly:

eg:

This won’t work as expected (created_at/updated_at will be nil) a

one:
  episode: active1
  play_id: 1
  play_time: 20
  country: United Kingdom
  created_at: <%= Time.parse('22:00 14 Aug 2009') %>
  updated_at: <%= Time.parse('22:00 14 Aug 2009') %>

but this will work as expected:

one:
  episode: active1
  play_id: 1
  play_time: 20
  country: United Kingdom
  created_at: <%= Time.parse('22:00 14 Aug 2009').to_s(:db) %>
  updated_at: <%= Time.parse('22:00 14 Aug 2009').to_s(:db) %>

Time in fixtures

When creating fixtures you should use this method to set created_at/updated_at timestamps correctly:

eg:

This won’t work as expected (created_at/updated_at will be nil) a

one:
  episode: active1
  play_id: 1
  play_time: 20
  country: United Kingdom
  created_at: <%= Time.parse('22:00 14 Aug 2009') %>
  updated_at: <%= Time.parse('22:00 14 Aug 2009') %>

but this will work as expected:

one:
  episode: active1
  play_id: 1
  play_time: 20
  country: United Kingdom
  created_at: <%= Time.parse('22:00 14 Aug 2009').to_s(:db) %>
  updated_at: <%= Time.parse('22:00 14 Aug 2009').to_s(:db) %>

Small notice about recognize urls with specific HTTP verbs

This is wrong ruby syntax:

assert_recognizes {:controller => 'items', :action => 'create'}, {:path => 'items', :method => :post}

Parentheses are obligatory in this case:

assert_recognizes({:controller => 'items', :action => 'create'}, {:path => 'items', :method => :post})

To find element ant not to find element

If you want to see administration panel:

assert_select "div.admin-panel"

But if you want to NOT see administration panel just write:

assert_no_tag 'div', :attributes => {:class => 'admin-panel'}

With multiple parameters

Example

remote_function(
   :url => some_remote_function_path, 
   :with => "'key1='+$('elem_id').value +'&key2='+$('elem_id').value+ '&this_elem_value='+value"
) 

with_exclusive_scope example by Ramon broken in latest Rails

The example Ramon gave works within the model itself, i.e.

class Article
  def closed
    with_exclusive_scope { find(:all) }
  end
end

However, from what I can see, this approach does not work within a controller. You may be wanting to use

Article.with_exclusive_scope { find(:all) }  #=> "SELECT * FROM 'articles'

But it will error out about find(:all) not existing on ArticlesController. To get around this, you must now do

Article.with_exclusive_scope { Article.find(:all) }  #=> "SELECT * FROM 'articles'

In otherwards, find(:all) isn’t being executed in the scope of the model, but in the controller in which its called.

Took me a minute or two to find out, so I thought I’d let others know.

Current Database Name: Sqlite version

Get the current database name when using Sqlite:

ActiveRecord::Base.connection.instance_variable_get(:@config)[:database].split('/').last

Content type for emails with attachments

Be aware that if you want to send emails with attachments, you probably want to use the content type multipart/mixed for the overall email.

The MIME time multipart/alternative is intended for emails where each part is a different representation of the same message.

After following the 2.3.2 documentation we used multipart/alternative to attach files to our mails, however this then caused Hotmail to ignore the attachments. It turns out it thought they were all alternative versions of the HTML content (which it could already display, so the alternatives weren’t necessary)

Re: Validate an optional URL field

Actually it’s easier to use validates_format_of for this task. Please refer to the comments under the doc.

Join multiple tables

It’s easy to join multiple tables too. In this case we have:

class Article
  belongs_to :feed
end

class Feed
  has_many :articles
  belongs_to :source
end

class Source
  has_many :feeds
  # t.bool :visible
end

You can search articles and specify a condition on the sources table.

Article.find(:all, 
  :conditions => { :feeds => { :sources => { :visible => true }}}, 
  :joins => [:feed => :source],