Recent notes

print standard-looking messages during migration

Within a migration file you can use the say method to print out informational messages that match the style of standard migration messages. The say_with_time method is also pretty great.

say "migrate existing data"
  #=> "-- migrate existing data"
# ... execute migration sql ...
say "updated all records", :subitem
  #=> "   -> updated 5 records"

:null => false

To not allow a column to have a NULL value, pass :null => false. Seems silly, but that’s it.

Strftime options

http://apidock.com/ruby/Time/strftime

Examples

Some usages:

Code example

Time.new.months_ago(1) # => Wed Aug 13 10:56:32 -0300 2008

Date.today.month_ago(7) # => Qua, 13 Fev 2008

Time.new.months_ago(1).to_s(:db) # => “2008-08-13 10:57:56”

Readable strftime

%a - The abbreviated weekday name (“Sun”)

%A - The full weekday name (“Sunday”)

%b - The abbreviated month name (“Jan”)

%B - The full month name (“January”)

%c - The preferred local date and time representation

%d - Day of the month (01..31) %H - Hour of the day, 24-hour clock (00..23)

%I - Hour of the day, 12-hour clock (01..12)

%j - Day of the year (001..366)

%m - Month of the year (01..12) %M - Minute of the hour (00..59)

%p - Meridian indicator (“AM” or “PM”)

%S - Second of the minute (00..60)

%U - Week number of the current year, starting with the first Sunday as the first day of the first week (00..53)

%W - Week number of the current year, starting with the first Monday as the first day of the first week (00..53)

%w - Day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0..6)

%x - Preferred representation for the date alone, no time

%X - Preferred representation for the time alone, no date

%y - Year without a century (00..99) %Y - Year with century

%Z - Time zone name %% - Literal “%” character t = Time.now t.strftime(“Printed on %m/%d/%Y”) #=> “Printed on 04/09/2003” t.strftime(“at %I:%M%p”) #=> “at 08:56AM”

Information on 'ModelName.transaction'

If you are looking for information about:

ModelName.transaction do
  ...
end

or

transaction do
  ...
end

see ActiveRecord::Transactions::ClassMethods

Information on 'ModelName.transaction'

If you are looking for information about:

ModelName.transaction do
  ...
end

or

transaction do
  ...
end

see ActiveRecord::Transactions::ClassMethods

CSS columns

You can also use this in a partial to create blocks of content into columns without setting a fixed height. This one is two columns.

.clear { clear: both;}
.block { float:left;width:200px;}

<div class="block">

<p>Content Item</p>

</div>
<%= cycle("", "<div class=\"clear\"></div>") -%>

Actual superclass

This class’s actual superclass is Net::HTTPRequest, for some reason that isn’t linked in here.

Be careful with overriding dynamic attribute based finders

don’t try something like this:

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  def self.find_by_bar(*args)
    foo = super(*args)
    raise SomeCustomException unless foo
    foo
  end
end

In newer versions of rails, method_missing defines find_by_bar when you first use it. By calling super, you’re triggering method_missing and overwriting your custom definition! It will work the first time then break! Manually write the call to find!

Reset a form

To reset a form easily you can do the following:

page["formid"].reset

Custom collection local variable name

Regarding the previous note from hoodow about using :variable_name to create a custom local variable name when rendering a collection with a partial, the argument should be :as instead of :variable_name, so:

render :partial => “video_listing”, :collection => @recommendations, :as => :video

Require 'strscan'

To use the StringScanner class,

require 'strscan'

This method has moved

To help anyone else looking, this method is now on the ActionView::Template class.

Testing protected controllers

When testing controllers which are protected with #authenticate_or_request_with_http_basic this is how you can supply the credentials for a successful login:

@request.env["HTTP_AUTHORIZATION"] = "Basic " + Base64::encode64("username:password")

Must be set before the request is sent through #get or whatever method.

Doc in ActionView::Helpers::FormHelper

See ActionView::Helpers::FormHelper’s check_box for documentation.

Creating additional cache stores

This method can be used to create additional cache stores for your application:

# creates a new Memory Store
mem_store = ActiveSupport::Cache.lookup_store
# creates a new MemCache Store
mem_cache_store = ActiveSupport::Cache.lookup_store :mem_cache_store, 'localhost:11212', :namespace => 'other_stuff'

The method takes the same arguments as the cache_store config. For more information about that go to ActionController::Caching.

Useful in migrations

The most common usage pattern for this method is probably in a migration, when just after creating a table you want to populate it with some default values, eg:

class CreateJobLevels < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :job_levels do |t|
      t.integer :id
      t.string :name

      t.timestamps
    end

    JobLevel.reset_column_information
    %w{assistant executive manager director}.each do |type|
      JobLevel.create(:name => type)
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :job_levels
  end
end

ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json

From Rails 2.1 onwards, the variable

ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json

affects how the JSON is generated. If this is true (default), then the JSON isn’t like the one above. Instead you’ll get:

konata = User.find(1)
konata.to_json
# => { "user": { "id": 1, "name": "Konata Izumi", "age": 16,
      "created_at": "2006/08/01", "awesome": true}}

(Note the model name is included as a root of the JSON object)

For Rails 2.1 generated projects, you’ll see this in the config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb file. You’ll need to set the value to false if you want the old behaviour.

ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json = false

Always pass a block

I highly recommend always taking a block and passing it back up the chain if you use alias_method_chain, even if the original method does not. Otherwise you’re keeping anyone later in the chain from adding support for blocks.

http://tech.hickorywind.org/articles/2008/08/29/always-pass-a-block-when-using-alias_method_chain

Brazilian Real (R$ 1.200,95)

helper:

def number_to_currency_br(number)
  number_to_currency(number, :unit => "R$ ", :separator => ",", :delimiter => ".")
end

Get year to show in descending order (Today to 1920 for example)

The way people think of time start and end would be 1920 to today. This made me think “but I want it show the current year first then down.” Well it’s as simple as swapping the start_year and end_year.

date_select :date, :start_year => Date.current.year, :end_year => 1920

# => 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 ... 1920

Moved to ActiveRecord::Calculations::ClassMethods

It appears that this method has simply been moved to the module ActiveRecord::Calculations::ClassMethods. You can still use the example listed in the docs here, it will simply call the method ActiveRecord::Calculations::ClassMethods#count.

When using RESTful routes

I had issues using expire_page with RESTful controllers when expiring anything other than the index action because I was basing my expire_page calls off this example.

The solution is to use my_resource_path for example when User with id 5 is updated, you would have to do:

expire_page user_path(user) # or
expire_page formatted_user_path(user, :xml)

This may apply to early versions but I have only tested on v2.1.0

:variable_name

In Edge Rails you can do something like this to change the local variable name when rendering a collection:

render :partial => “video_listing”, :collection => @recommendations, :variable_name => “video”

Example of raising a custom exception

Create custom exception<br> <pre> class PersonalException < Exception end </pre>

Raise the exception<br> <pre> raise PersonalException.new, “message” </pre>

Only attr_accessible attributes will be updated

If your model specified attr_accessible attributes, only those attributes will be updated.

Use attr_accessible to prevent mass assignment (by users) of attributes that should not be editable by a user. Mass assignment is used in create and update methods of your standard controller.

For a normal user account, for example, you only want login and password to be editable by a user. It should not be possible to change the status attribute through mass assignment.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :login, :password
end

So, doing the following will merrily return true, but will not update the status attribute.

@user.update_attributes(:status => 'active')

If you want to update the status attribute, you should assign it separately.

@user.status = 'active'
save

Prototype hinted_text_field application_helper

Place this in your helper. It will show a message inside the text box and remove it when someone clicks on it. If they don’t enter a value when they leave the field it’ll replace the message. (Requires javascript :defaults).

def hinted_text_field_tag(name, value = nil, hint = "Click and enter text", options={})
  value = value.nil? ? hint : value
  text_field_tag name, value, {:onclick => "if($(this).value == '#{hint}'){$(this).value = ''}", :onblur => "if($(this).value == ''){$(this).value = '#{hint}'}" }.update(options.stringify_keys)
end

# inside form_for example

hinted_text_field_tag :search, params[:search], "Enter name, brand or mfg.", :size => 30  
# => <input id="search" name="search" onblur="if($(this).value == ''){$(this).value = 'Enter name, brand or mfg.'}" onclick="if($(this).value == 'Enter name, brand or mfg.'){$(this).value = ''}" size="30" type="text" value="Enter name, brand or mfg." />

Customizing prompt

The :prompt option not only accepts a boolean value. It can also be given a string to define another than the standard prompt ‘Please select’. Referring to the example it could read:

collection_select(:post, :author_id, Author.find(:all),
                  :id, :name_with_initial,
                 {:prompt => 'Please select the author of this post'})

Delete collections with check box tags

Following autonomous’ directions works wonders on /edit but needs slight modifications when dealing with pagination on /index.

In a /index type listing page we can no longer assume that the list of ids coming back represents changes to all objects so we need to provide some context, that the list of object modifications in our params array is a list of modifications for some set of objects.

We can only assume subsets because pagination or filtering may reduce the set of objects we’re working on.

In our case we had a user management page which listed all users and showed whether they were activated or not. The following code is what we used to ensure that modifications to the first page of objects wouldn’t affect all the other pages.

index.rhtml

<% @users.each do |user| %>
  <%= hidden_field_tag('seen[]', user.id) -%>
  <%= check_box_tag 'activated[]', user.id -%>
<% end %>

role_controller.rb

def index
  if request.post?
    activated_ids = params[:activated].collect {|id| id.to_i} if params[:activated]
    seen_ids = params[:seen].collect {|id| id.to_i} if params[:seen]

    if activated_ids
      seen_ids.each do |id|
        r = User.find_by_id(id)
        r.activated = activated_ids.include?(id)
        r.save
      end
    end
  end
end