Flowdock

Good notes posted by szeryf

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October 8, 2011
6 thanks

Undocumented :location option

You can use undocumented :location option to override where respond_to sends if resource is valid, e.g. to redirect to products index page instead of a specific product’s page, use:

respond_with(@product, :location => products_url)  
March 11, 2010
3 thanks

Available statuses

All the available statuses (extracted from SYMBOL_TO_STATUS_CODE hash) in a slightly more readable form:

:continue                        => 100
:switching_protocols             => 101
:processing                      => 102
:ok                              => 200
:created                         => 201
:accepted                        => 202
:non_authoritative_information   => 203
:no_content                      => 204
:reset_content                   => 205
:partial_content                 => 206
:multi_status                    => 207
:im_used                         => 226
:multiple_choices                => 300
:moved_permanently               => 301
:found                           => 302
:see_other                       => 303
:not_modified                    => 304
:use_proxy                       => 305
:temporary_redirect              => 307
:bad_request                     => 400
:unauthorized                    => 401
:payment_required                => 402
:forbidden                       => 403
:not_found                       => 404
:method_not_allowed              => 405
:not_acceptable                  => 406
:proxy_authentication_required   => 407
:request_timeout                 => 408
:conflict                        => 409
:gone                            => 410
:length_required                 => 411
:precondition_failed             => 412
:request_entity_too_large        => 413
:request_uri_too_long            => 414
:unsupported_media_type          => 415
:requested_range_not_satisfiable => 416
:expectation_failed              => 417
:unprocessable_entity            => 422
:locked                          => 423
:failed_dependency               => 424
:upgrade_required                => 426
:internal_server_error           => 500
:not_implemented                 => 501
:bad_gateway                     => 502
:service_unavailable             => 503
:gateway_timeout                 => 504
:http_version_not_supported      => 505
:insufficient_storage            => 507
:not_extended                    => 510
February 23, 2010
3 thanks

Easy workaround for missing :through option

Note that belongs_to does not support :through option like has_many (although IMHO it would make sense in some cases), but you can easily simulate it with delegate.

For example:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :team
  ...
end
class Task < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :person
  delegate :team, :to => :person
end

There is of course more ways to do it, but this seems to be the easiest to me.

December 28, 2009
4 thanks

Attribute names are Strings, not Symbols

Another possible gotcha – the returned hash keys are of type String, not Symbol:

user.attributes["login"] # => "joe"
user.attributes[:login] # => nil
November 5, 2009 - (>= v2.1.0)
7 thanks

Named scope better than conditions

In modern versions of Rails, in most cases a named_scope is a better alternative to using :conditions on your has_many relations. Compare:

class User
  has_many :published_posts, :conditions => {:published => true}
end
user.published_posts

with:

class Post
  named_scope :published, :conditions => {:published => true}
end
class User
  has_many :posts
end
user.posts.published

It’s better because the Post’s logic (“am I published?”) should not be coupled within User class. This makes it easier to refactor: e.g. if you wanted to refactor the boolean :published field into a :status field with more available values, you would not have to modify User class. Having to modify User when you refactor some implementation detail of Post class is clearly a code smell.

This also applies to :order, :group, :having and similar options.

August 18, 2009
3 thanks

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();"
August 7, 2009
3 thanks

Documentation

This method only returns a cache manager object of sorts, to see what you can do with it, see ActiveSupport::Cache::Store.

June 18, 2009
3 thanks

Expensive method!

This method builds the a new hash every time it’s called, so be cautious not to use it in loops etc.

March 3, 2009
9 thanks

File class documentation

Most of the File class documentation is located in IO class docs. What you see here is what ‘ftools’ gives you.

February 10, 2009
8 thanks

Security issue with non-HTML formats

Please note that using default to_xml or to_json methods can lead to security holes, as these method expose all attributes of your model by default, including salt, crypted_password, permissions, status or whatever you might have.

You might want to override these methods in your models, e.g.:

def to_xml
  super( :only => [ :login, :first_name, :last_name ] )
end

Or consider not using responds_to at all, if you only want to provide HTML.

February 7, 2009 - (>= v2.2.1)
3 thanks

Deprecated

This method is deprecated. You should use:

I18n.translate('activerecord.errors.messages')
February 3, 2009
3 thanks

Possible gotcha

Please note that exists? doesn’t hold all the conventions of find, i.e. you can’t do:

Person.exists?(:conditions => ['name LIKE ?', "%#{query}%"]) # DOESN'T WORK!
February 1, 2009 - (v2.2.1)
3 thanks

You can't use Symbols, but you can use Regexps

You can’t use Symbol (although Symbol is accepted with render :action => :new), like:

assert_template :new # WON'T WORK!

But you can use Regexp, e.g.:

assert_template /new/ # WORKS OK

Note that the String matched with your Regexp is the full path to the template relative to the view/ directory of your app, so this will not work:

assert_template /^new$/ # WON'T WORK!

However this might:

assert_template /^employees\/new.html.haml$/