Notes posted to Ruby on Rails

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.

As of v2.3.4 you can use Symbols

This commit fixes using a Symbol with assert_template

http://github.com/rails/rails/commit/f383a4aa333cd8a99003eb1bdbb27b6fdea1056c

assert_template :new # works in 2.3.4

Using hidden tags

To use an <input type=“hidden” /> tag, use the following syntax:

<% form_for(@post) do |f| %>
  <%= f.hidden_field :user_id, { :value => user.id } %>
<% end %>

Setting a custom Content type

The given example seems to be broken. The :mime_type option as well as the [] access on the Mime::Type class are both not working.

The following code allows the custom setting of content types as intended by the original example:

class  PostsController < ActionController::Base
  def show
     @post = Post.find(params[:id])

    respond_to do |format|
      format.html
      format.ics { render :text => post.to_ics, :content_type => Mime::Type.lookup("text/calendar")  }
      format.xml { render :xml => @people.to_xml }
    end
  end
end

To use the memcached gem

If you use the mem_cache_store it will use “memcache-client” to talk to the actual cache. memcache-client is a pure Ruby library that is bundled with rails. There is a Ruby/C library called “memcached” that uses native bindings to talk to memcache, and it is reportedly (http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/doc/fauna/memcached/files/README.html) up to a 100 times faster than memcache-client. To use that instead,

# in shell
$ sudo gem install memcached --no-rdoc --no-ri

# in config/production.rb
require 'memcached'
config.action_controller.cache_store =
  :mem_cache_store, Memcached::Rails.new("localhost:11211")

This feature (to pass a configured MemCache-like object to cache_store=) is available since rails 2.3.3 and will hopefully be documented in 2.3.5.

How FormBuilders work

What, you were expecting documentation? :)

An excellent survey of how FormBuilders work is here:

http://code.alexreisner.com/articles/form-builders-in-rails.html

Outputs name even if condition is false

Please note that if the condition is false, link_to_if will still output the name given as a plain text (as documented above). If you want nothing printed at all, you’ll have to stay with the old and trusty:

link_to "Login", ... if @current_user.nil?

Outputs name even if condition is false

Please note that if the condition is false, link_to_if will still output the name given as a plain text (as documented above). If you want nothing printed at all, you’ll have to stay with the old and trusty:

link_to "Login", ... if @current_user.nil?

#blank?

The opposite of this is #blank?

#present?

The opposite of this is #present?

Only works within a transaction

Of course, this has to be done in a transaction, like so:

# we've loaded user earlier and did some checks which took some time
# to make sure, updates made meanwhile by other threads don't lead to
# optimistic locking errors here, we do this when finally suspending
User.transaction do
  user.lock!
  user.suspended = 1
  user.save!
end

See ActiveRecord:Callbacks for details about how before_* and after_* are handled

ActiveRecord::Callbacks

Setting child_index while using nested attributes mass assignment with prototype

First of all, drogus idea really helped me. I’m not using jQuery, therefore I implemented my own version:

link_to_function

def add_object_link(name, where, render_options)
  html = render(render_options)

  link_to_function name, %{
    Element.insert('#{where}', #{html.to_json}.replace(/index_to_replace_with_js/g, new Date().getTime()));
  }
end

Using add_object_link

<%= add_object_link 'Add asset', 'assets', :partial => 'assets/asset', :object => Asset.new, :locals => { :f => f } %>

Update statement won't include all attributes with ActiveRecord::Dirty

With the addition of ActiveRecord::Dirty, the update statement will only feature changed columns, as opposed to the comment of railsmonk below.

Re: Passing parameters to before_filter

I am not sure I get your “method 1” alec-c4; won’t that define the method each time the before_filter is called? Why not just define the method in the controller?

You can pass parameters or call protected methods with instance_eval:

before_filter :only => :show do |controller|
  controller.instance_eval do
    redirect_to edit_object_path(params[:id])
  end
end

No numbers or symbols

“Kyle”, “Дети”, “Niños”, “Quan-lu”, “た ち”

validates_format_of :first_name, :with => /^([^\d\W]|[-])*$/

Have check_box checked by default

In addition to comment below, you can make a column with default value so in your forms it will be enabled by default and behave correctly with validation errors unlike :checked => true

in your migration

add_column :accounts, :ssl_enabled, :boolean, :default => 1

Current version

See ActiveSupport::Memoizable for un-deprecated version.

build_association deletes existing dependent record

Surprisingly (at least I was surprised), when an associated record exists, the build_association method immediately NULLs the foreign key in the database.

So if you write a singleton “new” action for the association in the obvious way (calling build_association), then just visiting the page will disconnect an existing associated record. This violates the principle that a GET request shouldn’t affect the database.

To avoid this, you can check for an existing association first, and redirect to the show action.

Use it to solve FixtureClassNotFound errors.

If you are using a non standard table name by means of set_table_name in your model:

class MyClassName < ActiveRecord::Base
  set_table_name "mytablename"
end

then you will get FixtureClassNotFound errors when you try to use fixtures in you unit tests. To solve this use set_fixture_class inside your test:

require 'test_helper'
class MyClassNameTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase
  set_fixture_class :mytablename => MyClassName  
end

and rename your fixture file to mytablename.yml

Streaming XML with Builder

To generate larger XMLs, it’s a good idea to a) stream the XML and b) use Active Record batch finders.

Here’s one way of doing it:

def my_action
  @items = Enumerable::Enumerator.new(
    Item.some_named_scope,
    :find_each,
    :batch_size => 500)

  respond_to do |format|
    format.xml do
      render :text => lambda { |response, output|
        extend ApplicationHelper

        xml = Builder::XmlMarkup.new(
          :target => StreamingOutputWrapper.new(output),
          :indent => 2)
        eval(default_template.source, binding, default_template.path)
      }
    end
  end
end

The Builder template does not need to be modified.

Use camelize with singular words

To make the business example work, use camelize instead of classify:

"business".camelize     # => "Business"

sort_by

array.sort_by {|element| [element.foo, element.bar.name, element.baz]}

Taken from http://redcorundum.blogspot.com/2006/10/using-sortby-instead-of-sort.html

Making ActiveRecord models readonly

To force an ActiveRecord model to be read only you can do something along these lines:

class DelicateInfo < ActiveRecord::Base

 def readonly?
  true
 end

end

When you try to save the model it will raise an ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord exception:

info = DelicateInfo.first
info.save # => ActiveRecord::ReadOnlyRecord

Note, however, that destroy and delete will still work on the model unless you intercept those calls

form_tag with named route and html class

<% form_tag position_user_card_path(@user, card), :method => :put, :class => ‘position-form’ do %>

This code prevent's frome redirect_to(:back) looping

Prevent redirect_to(:back) looop

begin

# loop check
if session[:last_back] != request.env['HTTP_REFERER']
  redirect_to(:back)
  session[:last_back] = request.env['HTTP_REFERER']
else
  # raise on error
  raise ActionController::RedirectBackError
end

rescue ActionController::RedirectBackError

# fallback on loop or other :back error
redirect_to(:action => :index)

end

ActiveResource validation is a little different

Given the following model on the remote end:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
 validates_presence_of :first_name, :last_name, :email
end

And this ActiveResource on the client end:

class Person < ActiveResource::Base
 self.site = "http://api.people.com:3000/" 
end

Validation messages will only be returned after an attempted save call on the client end - eg:

person = Person.new( :first_name => 'Billy', :emails => "william@anotherplanet.co.za" )
person.valid?                 # => true
person.errors.full_messages   # => []
person.save                   # => false
person.valid?                 # => false
person.errors.full_messages   # => ["Last name can't be empty"]

In ActiveResource::Base it is suggested that you can perform client site validation with something like this:

class Person < ActiveResource::Base
 self.site = "http://api.people.com:3000/"
 protected
  def validate
   errors.add("last name", "can't be empty") if last_name.blank?
  end
end

Update attributes on mulitple models

Updates attributes on multiple models, saves each if validations pass.

def update_multiple

  @items = Item.find(params[:item_ids])
  @items.each do |item|
    item.attributes = params[:item].reject { |k,v| v.blank? }
  end
  if @items.all?(&:valid?)
    @items.each(&:save!)
    flash[:notice] = "Updated items!"
    redirect_to items_path
  else
    flash[:notice] = "Please enter valid data."
    render :action => 'edit_multiple'
  end
end

See also: ActiveRecord::Base#increment

This is a class-level method. For the instance-level equivalent see: ActiveRecord::Base#increment

item = Item.find(1)
item.foo_count # => 0
Item.increment_counter(:foo_count, 1)
item.foo_count # => 0
item.reload
item.foo_count # => 1
item.increment(:foo_count)
item.foo_count # => 2

Passing parameters to before_filter

I’ve found on the net 2 ways to pass parameters to before_filter:

method 1:

before_filter do |c|
c.class.module_eval do
private
def custom_filter
authorize(args)
end
end
end
before_filter :custom_filter

method 2:

before_filter do |c|
c.send(:authorize, args)
end