Notes posted to Ruby on Rails

Differences between normal or-assign operator

Differences between this method and normal memoization with ||=:

• memoize works with false/nil values

• Potential arguments are memoized

Take the following example:

def allowed?
  @allowed ||= begin
    # Big calculation
    puts "Worked"
    false
  end
end

allowed? # Outputs "Worked"
allowed? # Outputs "Worked" again

Since @allowed is set to false (this is also applicable with nil), the ||= operator will move on the the next statement and will not be short-circuited.

When you use memoize you will not have this problem.

def allowed?
  # Big calculation
  puts "Worked"
  false
end
memoize :allowed?

allowed? # Outputs "Worked"
allowed? # No output

Now, look at the case where we have parameters:

def random(max=10)
  @random ||= rand(max)
end

random     # => 4
random     # => 4 -- Yay!
random(20) # => 4 -- Oops!

Better use memoize again!

def random(max=10)
  rand(max)
end
memoize :random

random     # => 6
random     # => 6 -- Yay!
random(20) # => 12 -- Double-Yay!
random     # => 6 -- Head a'splode

Usage

This defines attr_accessors at a class level instead of instance level.

class Foo
  cattr_accessor :greeting
end

Foo.greeting = "Hello"

This could be compared to, but is not the same as doing this:

class Bar
  class << self
    attr_accessor :greeting
  end
end

Bar.greeting = "Hello"

The difference might not be apparent at first, but cattr_accessor will make the accessor inherited to the instances:

Foo.new.greeting #=> "Hello"
Bar.new.greeting # NoMethodError: undefined method `greeting' for #<Bar:0x18e4d78>

This inheritance is also not copy-on-write in case you assumed that:

Foo.greeting  #=> "Hello"
foo1, foo2 = Foo.new, Foo.new

foo1.greeting = "Hi!"

Foo.greeting  #=> "Hi!"
foo2.greeting #=> "Hi!"

This makes it possible to share common state (queues, semaphores, etc.), configuration (max value, etc.) or temporary values through this.

Specify controller

If needed, you can also specify a controller.

redirect_to :controller => 'post', :action => 'index'

Multiple associations on the same level

You can also specify multiple associations that are on the same level, like this:

konata = User.find(1)
konata.to_json(:include => [:posts, :roles])

{"id": 1, "name": "Konata Izumi", "age": 16,
 "created_at": "2006/08/01", "awesome": true,
 "posts": [{"id": 1, "author_id": 1, "title": "Welcome to the weblog"},
           {"id": 2, author_id: 1, "title": "So I was thinking"}],
 "roles": [{"id":1, "user_id":1, "name": "Admin"},
           {"id":2, "user_id":1, "name": "Moderator"}]}

Valid options changed in Rails v2.3.0 RC1

The valid options in Rails v2.3.0 RC1 are no longer

:connector and :skip_last_comma, but

:words_connector, :two_words_connector, and :last_word_connector:

>> %w(lorem ipsum dolor sit).to_sentence
=> "lorem, ipsum, dolor, and sit"

>> %w(lorem ipsum dolor sit).to_sentence(:words_connector => ' + ')
=> "lorem + ipsum + dolor, and sit"

>> %w(lorem ipsum).to_sentence(:two_words_connector => ' through ')
=> "lorem through ipsum"

# No effect if more than two words
>> %w(lorem ipsum dolor sit).to_sentence(:two_words_connector => ' through ')
=> "lorem, ipsum, dolor, and sit"

>> %w(lorem ipsum dolor sit).to_sentence(:last_word_connector => ' or ')
=> "lorem, ipsum, dolor or sit"

used for testing

for example, to use the @message instance variable in a view test,

assigns[:message] = @message

you could type

assigns[:foo] = @message

and then message would be available to the view as @foo.

Extend with an anonymous module

You can extend with an anonymous module for one-off cases that won’t be repeated:

belongs_to :container, :polymorphic => true, :extend => ( Module.new do
    def find_target
      ...
    end
  end )

The parentheses are important, will fail silently without them.

read_attribute?

The source if this method and other methods indicate the reading of read_attribute (protected)

there is no documentation about the insides of this method, the only entry listed is read_attribute (private) which is deprecated since 1.2.6?

Conflicts with Ruby 1.8.7

Using this with Rails < 2.2.x and Ruby 1.8.7 will create a conflict between ActiveSupport and Ruby, generating the following error:

>> '/'.first
NoMethodError: undefined method `[]' for #<Enumerable::Enumerator:0x176b974>
  from /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/access.rb:43:in `first'

So if using an older version of Rails with Ruby 1.8.7, use String to instead of String.first

Specialized versions of find with method_missing

Check ActiveRecord::Base.method_missing for documentation on the family of “magic” find methods (find_by_x, find_all_by_x, find_or_create_by_x, etc.).

ATM does not work in Rails 2.3 Edge

add to test/spec_helper to make it work again…

#spec_helper / test_helper
include ActionController::TestProcess

Validate an optional URL field

Let’s say that you have an optional URL field to one of your models and you want to validate the URL. You can accomplish this by using the URI library:

require 'uri' # Put this at the beginning of your model file

validates_each :url, :allow_blank => true do |record, field, value|
  begin
    valid = (URI.parse(value).scheme =~ /https?/)
  rescue URI::InvalidURIError
    valid = false
  end
  record.errors.add field, "not a valid url" unless valid
end

If you want to add even more testing in there, just go ahead. For now, we just check that the link is to a HTTP resource, but you might have other requirements. This will allow stuff like “http://example” since “example” might be a valid intranet domain. If you want to check for a TLD in there, you can do so with a simple regexp.

For more information about the URI library, check out http://apidock.com/ruby/URI/

You can't have many :through with habtm

Imagine the following

a has_many b
b has_and_belongs_to_many c
a has_many c :through => b

a.b works fine

b.c works fine

a.c throws an error!

has_many :through where the through association is a habtm is not supported in Rails. The error is:

ActiveRecord::HasManyThroughSourceAssociationMacroError: Invalid source reflection macro :has_and_belongs_to_many for has_many :stories, :through => :subcategories. Use :source to specify the source reflection

Specifying the source reflection still won’t help you though, because this kind of has_many :through isn’t supported at all.

Nested with_options

You can nest with_options blocks, and you can even use the same name for the block parameter each time. E.g.:

class Product
  with_options :dependent => :destroy do |product|
    product.with_options :class_name => 'Media' do |product|
      product.has_many :images, :conditions => {:content_type => 'image'}
      product.has_many :videos, :conditions => {:content_type => 'video'}
    end

    product.has_many :comments
  end
end

Check if value is included in array of valid values

If you want to check the value of an attribute using an array of valid values, the array has to be defined before the validation, so

validates_inclusion_of :name, :in => VALID_NAMES
VALID_NAMES = %w(Peter Paul Mary)

won’t work, but

VALID_NAMES = %w(Peter Paul Mary)
validates_inclusion_of :name, :in => VALID_NAMES

will.

CAUTION! :frequency option description is misleading

To use event-based observer, don’t supply :frequency param at all. :frequency => 0 causes JS error.

Use this option only if time-based observer is what you need.

Static and dynamic attachments

You can attach static files directly:

attachment :content_type => "image/jpeg", :body => File.read("someimage.jpg")

and you can also define attachments dynamically by using a block:

attachment "text/csv" do |a|
  a.body = my_data.to_csv
end

Turn off for individual controllers/actions

To disable protection for all actions in your controller use skip_before_filter:

skip_before_filter :verify_authenticity_token

You can also pass :only and :except to disable protection for specific actions, e.g:

skip_before_filter :verify_authenticity_token, :only => :index

Anchor tag in link_to

Code example

link_to("some text", articles_path(:anchor => "comment"))

will output <a href = “/articles#comment” >some text

Date_select with assert_valid_keys

If you are using date_select with assert_valid_keys you have to allow 3 parameters named field(1i), field(2i) and field(3i).

For example with field

date_select("post", "written_on")

You have to allow following fields:

params[:post].assert_valid_keys( 
  'written_on(1i)', 'written_on(2i)', 'written_on(3i)'
)

If you want to avoid SQL...

…you’re probably looking for http://apidock.com/rails/ActiveRecord/Calculations/ClassMethods/count

Empty elements

If you want to output an empty element (self-closed) like “br”, “img” or “input”, use the tag method instead.

Remember to sanitize name

While useful when in need of richer markup inside a link, the name parameter isn’t sanitized or escaped and thus should be escaped when its content can’t be guaranteed to be safe.

E.g.

link_to(url, url)

may cause problems with character entities if url contains ampersands.

Correct usage

link_to(h(url), url)

This applies to all dynamic content.

See column

See the end part of the docs on column for example uses.

Reverse of this

If you want to do the reverse of this, e.g. go from a specific date and back to a certain day of the previous week, you can implement it like this:

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

If you do not want to make your own method of this, but just want to do it in a regular chaining of date methods (like Date.today.next_year.at_midnight), you can do it like the following:

(date - 7).next_week(:tuesday) # Tuesday, last week

Please note that you just need to subtract 7 if you want to move back a week. Only use these methods if you want to go to a specific day of the week.

Reverse naming

The reverse of this is last_month and not previous_month, like one might believe from the naming.

Reverse naming

The reverse of this is last_year and not previous_year, like one might believe from the naming.

use #collect instead of #each

The earlier reminder to use #collect instead of #each applies regardless of whether the tag is nested or not.

This is counterintuitive, as #collect returns an array of strings of HTML tags, but ActionView renders it properly.

Clear and simple rescue

noxyu3m, your code is rescuing all exceptions, not just ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid.

I think this syntax is a bit more clear than using the global variable.

def create
  @model = Model.new(params[:model)
  @model.save!
rescue => err                          # rescues all exceptions
  logger.error(err.to_s)
end

Simple rescue

Take it easy:

def create
  @model = Model.new(params[:model)
  @model.save!
rescue
  logger.error(!$.to_s)
end

Global variable !$ refers to the Exception object.