Flowdock

Good notes posted by Soleone

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February 13, 2009
3 thanks

New test syntax

You can use either one and even mix in the same test case if you want:

class Test < Test::Unit::TestCase
  # old way to define a test method (prefix with test_)
  def test_should_be_valid_without_content
    assert Comment.new.valid?
  end

  # new way to define a test
  test "should be valid without content" do
    assert Comment.new.valid?
  end
end
February 12, 2009
4 thanks

Real life use

If you’re wondering what the base64 format is used for, here are some examples:

Just note that the encoded (character) data is about 30% larger than un-encoded (binary) data.

February 12, 2009
4 thanks

Binary files

Another real important flag is b when dealing with binary files. For example to download an mp3 from the internet you need to pass the b flag or the data will be screwed up:

# Downloads a binary file from the internet
require 'open-uri'
url = "http://fubar/song.mp3"
open(url, 'rb') do |mp3|
  File.open("local.mp3", 'wb') do |file|
    file.write(mp3.read)
  end
end

Don’t say you haven’t been warned. :)

February 12, 2009
3 thanks

Other regular-expression modifiers

Likewise you can set Regexp::IGNORECASE directly on the regexp with the literal syntax:

/first/i
# This will match "first", "First" and even "fiRSt"

Even more modifiers

  • o – Perform #{} interpolations only once, the first time the regexp literal is evaluated.

  • x – Ignores whitespace and allows comments in * regular expressions

  • u, e, s, n – Interpret the regexp as Unicode (UTF-8), EUC, SJIS, or ASCII. If none of these modifiers is specified, the regular expression is assumed to use the source encoding.

Literal to the rescue

Like string literals delimited with %Q, Ruby allows you to begin your regular expressions with %r followed by a delimiter of your choice.

This is useful when the pattern you are describing contains a lot of forward slash characters that you don’t want to escape:

%Q(http://)
# This will match "http://"
February 12, 2009
4 thanks

Literal syntax

As you propably know you can create an Array either with the constructor or the literal syntax:

Array.new == []
# => true

But there is also another nice and concise literal syntax for creating Arrays of Strings:

["one", "two", "three"] == %w[one two three]
# => true

You can use any kind of parenthesis you like after the %w, either (), [] or {}. I prefer the square brackets because it looks more like an array.

February 12, 2009
4 thanks

Useful scenario

This can be quite useful, for example when writing a command line script which takes a number of options.

Example

Let’s say you want to make a script that can make the basic CRUD operations. So want to be able to call it like this from the command line:

> my_script create
> my_script delete

The following script allows you to use any abbreviated command as long as it is unambiguous.

# my_script.rb
require 'abbrev'

command = ARGV.first
actions = %w[create read update delete]
mappings = Abbrev::abbrev(actions)
puts mappings[command]

That means you can call it like this:

> my_script cr
> my_script d

And it will print:

create
delete