Good notes posted by autonomous

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”

Using gmail SMTP server to send mail

First you would need to sign up with Google Apps, which is a very painless process:

http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new

Next you need to install a plugin that will allow ActionMailer to make a secure connection to google:

script/plugin install git://github.com/caritos/action_mailer_tls.git

We need this due to transport layer security used by google.

Lastly all you need to do is place this in your environment.rb file and modify it to your settings:

ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = {
 :address => "smtp.gmail.com",
 :port => 587,
 :domain => "your.domain_at_google.com",
 :authentication => :plain,
 :user_name => "google_username",
 :password => "password"
}

Friendlier error message example

The default error messages can be a bit stale and off putting. Try somethings like this:

error_messages_for(
  :user, 
  :header_message => "Oops - We couldn't save your user!", 
  :message => "The following fields were a bit of a problem:", 
  :header_tag => :h1
)

You can also use error_messages_for as follows

<%  form_for User.new do |f| %>
  <%=  f.error_messages :header_message => "..." %>
<%  end  %>

Pass id collections with check box tags

It can be useful to pass a collection of ids to a controller, especially in the case of a has_many relationship, for example:

User has_many Roles

In your view you could have something like:

<ul>
  <% @roles.each do |role| %>
      <li>
        <%= check_box_tag 'role_ids[]', role.id -%>
        <%= h role.name -%>
      </li>
  <% end %>
</ul>

Note the square brackets after role_ids - this is important for passing a collection through to the controller.

If you place this in a form and submit it, you can expect to see a param passed into the controller that looks like:

"role_ids"=>["1", "2", "3"]

select_tag with options_for_select example

An example of using options_for_select with select_tag

select_tag 'user_id', options_for_select(@users.collect{ |u| [u.name, u.id] })

This would generate something like:

<select id="user_id" name="user_id">
  <option value="1">Brad</option>
  <option value="2">Angie</option>
  <option value="3">Jenny</option>
</select>

Nested resources in form_for

If you like doing things RESTfully and have a model relationship like:

Post_ has many Comments_

Then you can construct a form_for within your view to mirror this relationship when creating comments:

form_for [@post, @comment] do |f|
  ...
end

You also need to make sure your routes reflect this relationship:

map.resources :post, :has_many => [:comments]

helper method to partial

concat can be useful for rendering a block to a partial from a helper:

def block_to_partial(partial_name, options = {}, &block)
  options.merge!(:body => capture(&block))
  concat(render(:partial => partial_name, :locals => options), block.binding)
end

This would be particularly useful if you had some partial to help you out with rounded corners, for example. So, in your helper:

def rounded_corners &block
  block_to_partial("shared/rounded_corners", {}, &block)
end

In your view you could have something like:

<% rounded_corners do -%>
     This text is surrounded by rounded corners
<% end -%>

You would have to create some partial in

app/views/shared/rounded_corners.html.erb

And it would look something like:

<div class='c1'>
  <div class=c2>
    .
    .
    .
    <%= body -%>
  </div>
</div>

Generate an observer

Generating an observer from the command line follows the usual pattern:

script/generate observer audit

This will create a model called:

app/models/audit_observer.rb