Recent notes

Required Reading

The details for using layout (such as possible values for the conditions hash) can be found in ActionController::Layout::ClassMethods.

Convert strings to Dates

Uses the undocumented Date._parse method. Some usage examples:

'06/15/2008'.to_date         # => Sun, 15 Jun 2008
'20080615'.to_date           # => Sun, 15 Jun 2008
'2008-06-15'.to_date         # => Sun, 15 Jun 2008
'Sun, 15 Jun 2008'.to_date   # => Sun, 15 Jun 2008

migration example

def self.up create_table :regs do |t|

t.column :login, :string, :limit=>'10'
t.column :pass, :string, :limit=>'10'
t.column :email, :string, :limit=>'20'
t.column :fio, :string, :limit=>'30'
t.column :born, :date
t.column :phone_code, :integer, :limit=>'3'
t.column :phone_post, :integer, :limit=>'7'
t.column :password, :string, :limit=>'20'
t.column :pass_when, :date
t.column :pass_who, :string,:limit=>'30'
t.column :wmid, :integer, :limit=>12
t.column :wmr, :integer, :limit=>12
t.column :wmz, :integer, :limit=>12
end

add_index :regs, [:login, :wmr, :wmz], :unique => true end

недочёт

не плохо было бы, чтобы навязывали проставление индексов.

watch out for urls with &

image_tag(‘x.com/aaa?a=1&b=2’) = x.com/aaa?a=1&b=2

For more information

See Base class.

For more information

See ActiveMailer::Base.

List of statuses

You can view a full list of statuses at http://dev.rubyonrails.org/browser/trunk/actionpack/lib/action_controller/status_codes.rb.

head can be called with a symbol or a status code:

Using head with a symbol

head :length_required # 411 Length Required
head :ok              # 200 OK

Using head with a status code

head 404              # 404 Not Found

Using counters with collections

When you’re rendering a collection partial, the partial_name_counter variable contains the position of the current element in the collection. For example:

<%= render(:partial => 'example', :collection => %w(rails-doc is cool)) %>

Now in _example.html.erb:

<p>Element: <%= example %> (index: <%= example_counter %>)</p>

It would produce:

<p>Element: rails-doc (index: 1)</p>
<p>Element: is (index: 2)</p>
<p>Element: cool (index: 3)</p>

As you can see, indexing starts from 1.

Link to same URL with different format

Use params.merge as options. Ex.

<%= link_to "RSS feed", params.merge(:format => :rss), :class => "feed_link" %>

Using a specific layout

To choose the layout (or no layout) for a method call the render method with a :layout option.

around_filter code example

This is how it’s used:

around_filter do |controller, action|
  do_your(:stuff) do
    action.call
  end
end

Window open a dialog of no menu, no status, have scroll

Example

link_to name, url, :popup => ['dialog name','toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes']

Add if before Ajax.request

Use link_to_remote’s before

link_to_remote(“watcher”, {:url => “/watchers/add”, :before => “if($F(‘user_id’)==”){return false;}” })

<a onclick=“if($F(‘user_id’)==”){return false;}; new Ajax.Request(‘/watchers/add’, {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true, parameters:”}); return false;”>添加订阅人

Add empty option and text is -select-

select :object, :method, options, :prompt => ‘-select-’

Used to get current Rails environment

Rails#env returns a string representing the current Rails environment.

Code example

>> Rails.env # in development mode
Rails.env
=> "development"

Getting textfield values into "link_to_remote" via Javascript Prototype

Use Prototype to get the value of a text field via Javascript, to pass to the ‘link_to_remote’ helper using code similar to below:

link_to_remote 'Link Name', {:update => "foo", :url => {:controller => "bar", :action => "baz"}, :with => "'model[textfield]=' + $F('textfield_id')"}

Connections to multiple databases

establish_connection can be used to connect to multiple databases. The immediate downside is that your rake migrations may not work properly without hacking.

In each model that resides in a different database we call:

establish_connection :different_database

You can check they are working by hitting script/console with:

>> App.connection.instance_eval {@config[:database]}
=> "app_development"
>> AnotherDatabase.connection.instance_eval {@config[:database]}
=> "another_database"

Now doing a call to AnotherDatabase.find() will connect to the AnotherDatabase database and start returning results.

error in block code example

I guess there’s an error in this part of the code:

link_to_function("Show me more", nil, :id => "more_link") do |page|
  page[:details].visual_effect  :toggle_blind
  page[:more_link].replace_html "Show me less"
end

It doesn’t work. It should be:

link_to_function("Show me more", nil, :id => "more_link") do |page|
  page[:details].toggle "Blind"
  page[:more_link].replace_html "Show me less"
end

Using Rails 2.1.0

Rails 2.1 caching internals

Rails 2.1 caching features are pretty much undocumented. Rob Anderton has documented some internal stuff here:

http://www.thewebfellas.com/blog/2008/6/9/rails-2-1-now-with-better-integrated-caching

benchmark and silence methods

benchmark (title, log_level = Logger::DEBUG, use_silence = true) {|| …}

Log and benchmark the workings of a single block and silence whatever logging that may have happened inside it (unless use_silence is set to false).

The benchmark is only recorded if the current level of the logger matches the log_level, which makes it easy to include benchmarking statements in production software that will remain inexpensive because the benchmark will only be conducted if the log level is low enough.

silence () {|| …}

Silences the logger for the duration of the block. To silence the logger in your controller, simply use:

NameOfController.logger.silence do

# your code here...

end

:case_sensitive is on by default?

In contrast to what the documentation said, :case_sensitive seems to be on by default. This is the case with MySQL at least, I’m not sure about other databases.

Turn layout off

If you don’t want a layout rendered, just put:

layout nil

in your controller.

Better explanation for ActionController sweepers

The first sentence in this description is confusing. http://codelevy.com/articles/2008/03/04/rails-caching-sweepers-controllers-and-models explains it more clearly.

Use the :as option for SEO friendly URLs

The :as option to map.resources can be used to generate SEO friendly URLs like so:

Code Example

map.resources :operating_systems, :as => 'operating-systems'

# operating_systems_path => /operating-systems

Turns hash keys into symbols

This method is part of ActiveSupport, which is a collection of classes and standard library extensions that are useful for Rails.

symbolize_keys! returns a new hash with all keys converted to symbols.

This can be helpful when you have a non-ActiveRecord model and you want your initialize method to take a hash of parameters. If you symbolize the hash, you can extract your parameters regardless of whether initialize received a hash of strings or hash of symbols.

Passing find() arguments

I you need to pass additional arguments to a scope (e.g. limit), do this:

Shirt.colored('red').all(:limit => 10)

Rails defined Mime Types

Here are all the default Rails Mime Types:

"*/*"                      => :all
"text/plain"               => :text
"text/html"                => :html 
"application/xhtml+xml"    => :html
"text/javascript"          => :js 
"application/javascript"   => :js 
"application/x-javascript" => :js 
"text/calendar"            => :ics   
"text/csv"                 => :csv   
"application/xml"          => :xml 
"text/xml"                 => :xml 
"application/x-xml"        => :xml 
"text/yaml"                => :yaml 
"application/x-yaml"       => :yaml 
"application/rss+xml"      => :rss   
"application/atom+xml"     => :atom  
"application/json"         => :json 
"text/x-json"              => :json

Default Mime Types

This module sets up all the default mime-types. Here they are:

"*/*"                      => :all
"text/plain"               => :text
"text/html"                => :html 
"application/xhtml+xml"    => :html
"text/javascript"          => :js 
"application/javascript"   => :js 
"application/x-javascript" => :js 
"text/calendar"            => :ics   
"text/csv"                 => :csv   
"application/xml"          => :xml 
"text/xml"                 => :xml 
"application/x-xml"        => :xml 
"text/yaml"                => :yaml 
"application/x-yaml"       => :yaml 
"application/rss+xml"      => :rss   
"application/atom+xml"     => :atom  
"application/json"         => :json 
"text/x-json"              => :json

x-sendfile

Rails 2.1 supports the x_sendfile apache module:

send_file '/path/to.png', :x_sendfile => true, :type => 'image/png'