Notes posted to Ruby on Rails

Incorrectly named option

The :add_month_number option should be :add_month_numbers

Belongs_to, Has_many association

I have a belongs_to, has_many association between manufacturer and modelname. (manufacturer has many modelnames).

In the new modelname page, I have a drop down menu that lists all the manufacturers, so I choose eg Dell, and then in modelname.name field I enter inspiron or what ever. To create that drop down I used:

<%= f.select(:manufacturer_id, Manufacturer.find(:all).collect {|u| [u.name, u.id]}, :prompt => 'Select') %>

The reason that works was explained by fcheung and rsl on #rubyonrails. Thanks:

the form builder basically calls the method whose docs you have read, inserting the appropriate first argument

The object is referenced internally when you call f.whatever. in any of those tags, the object is omitted when used on a form block variable

Force initial value

If you want to force an initial value for your text_field which is normally based on your object attribute value, you can use :

text_field :ecard, :sender, :value => 'contact@host.com'

acts_as_state_machine named scopes

If you are using the acts_as_state_machine plugin, this will generate all named scopes for your various states.

Place it after the acts_as_state_machine and state declarations.

class Task < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_state_machine :initial => :waiting
  state :waiting
  state :running
  state :finished    

  states.each { |s| named_scope s, :conditions => { :state => s.to_s } }
end

Then doing a Task.waiting will return the corresponding tasks.

with resources

/products

current_page?(products_path)

# => true

Calling migrations within migrations

It’s very occasionally a wise strategy to call migrations from within other migrations. This is typically done when you are adding a migration that deletes a now-obsolete table.

Let’s say one night when you were drunk or otherwise not thinking straight you did something like this:

class CreateExGirlfriendTexts < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self(dot)up
    create_table :ex_girlfriend_texts { |t| ... }
  end

  def self(dot)down
    drop_table :ex_girlfriend_texts
  end
end

Oops! You could add this for your “undo” migration the next morning:

class FixDrunkMistake < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self(dot)up
    CreateExGirlfriendTexts.down
  end

  def self(dot)down
    CreateExGirlfriendTexts.up
  end
end

Now, in the event you decide you really did like that table, you can always get it back easily. Keep in mind this will be made more complicated if your table is modified over multiple transactions.

Accessing aggregate methods with :group

You can access aggregate methods (such as SUM, COUNT, etc.) when using a JOIN and GROUP BY query by simply naming the aggregate columns and calling them as methods on the returned objects:

hits_by_page = WebpageHit.all({
  :select => "webpages.*, COUNT(webpage_hit.id) AS view_count",
  :joins => :webpage,
  :group => "webpages.id"
})
homepage_hits = hits_by_page[homepage.id].view_count

The view_count method is added to the Webpage model by this call. Note, however, that this method returns a string, and is not typecasted by Rails.

Example

my_instance.connection.clear_query_cache

:cache_path strangeness

I’ve noticed that using an example like this one shown in the docs has some issues with URI escaping:

caches_action :feed, :cache_path => Proc.new { |controller|
     controller.params[:user_id] ?
       controller.send(:user_list_url, controller.params[:user_id], controller.params[:id]) :
       controller.send(:list_url, controller.params[:id]) }
 end

When I do this, the :myroute_url methods return URLs with escaped parameters, as one would expect, but for some reason Rails unescapes these strings by the time it uses them to store the cache blob. This is messing up my cache expiration routines, because they keep track of the escaped versions of the urls that are returned by the routing methods, not the unescaped versions. It would be easier if Rails didn’t do any magic to the string and simply used exactly what you pass to cache_path.

Method doesn't exists

Don’t confuse it with new_record? in ActiveRecord

Upgrading from Rails v2.1 to v2.2

Don’t forget to run

rake gems:refresh_specs

if you vendored any gem plugins under Rails v2.1 to update them with the proper specs.

Removed form Rails core

country_select and country_options_for_select were removed from Rails core since 2.2 release, but extracted to plugin. http://github.com/rails/country_select/tree/master/README

Also you could be interested in localized_country_select plugin which uses Rails internationalization framework I18n. http://github.com/karmi/localized_country_select/tree/master/README.rdoc

Types array shorthand

You can have respond_to blocks that look like this:

respond_to do |format|
  format.html
  format.xml
end

Here each individual format doesn’t receive a block and so Rails automatically tries to render the appropriate view for the mime type (e.g. action.html.erb, action.xml.erb or as a last resort action.erb)

You can do exactly the same thing by passing an array of Mime types to respond_to like this:

respond_to(:html, :xml)

Full List of Supported Formats

With a sample date of December 25th, 2008, at 14:35:05:

:db           # => 2008-12-25 14:35:05
:number       # => 20081225143505
:time         # => 14:35
:short        # => 25 Dec 14:35
:long         # => December 25, 2008 14:35
:long_ordinal # => December 25th, 2008 14:35
:rfc822       # => Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:35:05 +0000

Installation

Install the plugin by typing

script/plugin install auto_complete

Remember to restart webservice :)

Problematic :scroll option

If you use the :scroll => true option, note that at http://github.com/madrobby/scriptaculous/wikis/sortable-create it says:

“If you want your sortable list to be scrollable, wrap the list in a div and set the div to scrollable as apposed to making the ul element scrollable. Also, in IE you must set “position:relative” on the scrollable div.”

Application Helper for Fading Flash Messages

A simple helper method for showing the flash message. Includes optional fade in seconds (view needs javascript_include_tag defaults if you desire fade effect):

def show_flash_message(options={})
  html = content_tag(:div, flash.collect{ |key,msg| content_tag(:div, msg, :class => key) }, :id => 'flash-message')
  if options.key?(:fade)
    html << content_tag(:script, "setTimeout(\"new Effect.Fade('flash-message');\",#{options[:fade]*1000})", :type => 'text/javascript')
  end
  html
end

simply call in your views then using:

<%= show_flash_message(:fade => 4) %>

:select multiple fields

it might be obvious or not:

Task.find :all, :select => "name, members"

See #render for "new" syntax

See: render

Another Example

Do not mistakenly pass class_name as a key/value pair (Hash form). You will get an error including the text ‘class or module needed’. It should look like this:

serialize :some_array, Array

Or, perhaps clearer would be:

serialize(:some_array, Array)

That may seem obvious, but it is common to be in the habit of passing things as a key/value pair.

Ajax form

<% form_remote_tag :url => { :action => “analyze”}, :update => “result” do %>

  <%= select_tag 'company_id', options_for_select([]) %><br/>
  <%= text_area_tag :text, nil, { :cols => 100, :rows => 10 }%><br/>
  <%= submit_tag "Analyze", :disable_with => "Please wait..." %>
<% end %>
<div id="result"></div>

:use_route to force named routes in url_for

If you are using a plugin or library that calls url_for internally, you can force it to use a particular named route with the :use_route key. For instance, calling:

url_for(:controller => 'posts', :action => 'view', :id => post, :use_route => :special_post)

will have the same effect as:

special_post_url(post)

Naturally, this is much more verbose if you’re calling it directly, but can be a lifesaver if url_for is being called inside another method (e.g. will_paginate).

Re: Using a Loading Graphic

You probably want to be using :complete, not :loaded, to execute Javascript when an Ajax request has finished. See: http://prototypejs.org/api/ajax/options

Using your model's connection

It’s possible to execute raw SQL over the currently established connection for a model.

You may configure Rails to use different databases for different models. To make sure you are querying the correct database you may do the following:

MyModel.connection.execute("UPDATE `my_models` SET `beer`='free' WHERE 1")

Common options

“Common options” mentioned here is default PrototypeHelper options documented in link_to_remote

This means you can use :loading, :loaded, :failure, :success, etc in observe_field.

Parsing YAML from a POST request

When building a REST server which should accept YAML there are several things to take into consideration.

First of the client should tell the server what type of data it is going to send. This is done via the Content-Type header (which is NOT only a response header as opposed to what the RESTful Web Services book from O’Reilly made us believe).

Second the server application should know how handle the body of the POST request. Placing the following line in your environment.rb:

ActionController::Base.param_parsers[Mime::YAML] = :yaml

This registers the YAML parser. Smooth sailing from here on!

Add spacer template

<%= render :partial => “product”, :collection => @products, :spacer_template => “product_ruler” %>

current_url

exact url from browser window:

def current_url
  url_for :only_path=>false,:overwrite_params=>{}
end

Compiling mysql gem in Leopard with MacPorts MySQL

Needs architecture and reference to mysql_config:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- \
--with-mysql-config=/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysql_config

Rendering YAML

When you want to render XML or YAML you can use

render :xml, some_object.to_xml 

or

render :json, some_object.to_json

However there is no equivalent for YAML. What you can do is render just plain text with a correct content-type:

render :text => some_object.to_yaml, :content_type => 'text/yaml'

The content_type is debatable but this seems to be the most standard.