Make sure to pass the migration a native Ruby hash as the default value. DO NOT pass it a string representation of an hash, thinking that it'll work (as valid JSON).
DO THIS
t.jsonb :preferences, default: {}, null: false
NOT
t.jsonb :preferences, default: '{}', null: false
It'll break in a maddeningly non-obvious way. Take my word for it. Also there is this relevant StackOverflow post which saved my ass.
The handy-dandy Nodemon tool is not just for Node. Today I whipped up an invocation that can restart my Rails server whenever there are changes in the config directory tree. Super useful when working heavily with i18n, since changing translation files requires bouncing the server to see changes reflected in the view.
$ nodemon --watch config -e rb,yml --exec "rails server"
Ruby 2 gained keyword arguments while I was away in Javascript-land the last few years, and somehow I missed the memo. Loving the elegance of how you specify defaults and required parameters.
Thoughtbot has the best writeup.
I suspect I will not be using non-keyword arguments in my Ruby code anymore.
Today I woke up to an exception RuntimeError: can't modify frozen String
I looked at the code that had raised the exception. It was doing a gsub! on a value out of params. It took me a bit of digging to figure out why it failed. Turns out there's an edge case that causes one of those values to get pulled out of ENV instead of the normal flow where it originates from the user.
Strings coming out of ENV are frozen. D'oh!
In normal unit testing, you say expect(person.calculate_bmi).to eq(21) or something like that. Approvals allow you to assert the state of complex objects against a known state.
For example, you can say, Approvals.verify(person)
I had not heard of this approach, which is posed as an alternative to traditional TDD. http://approvaltests.com
File this one under huge pain in the ass... Dropbox is ending support for public folders as of September 17th, 2017. Luckily that's a lot of lead time.
Description of the new Shared Files functionality that replaces public folders.
You are using HTML5 typed text input fields, aren't you?
If you make an input element with type="email" and you make it required, then the browser will take care of making sure that the email is valid on form submit. Automatically.
Doesn't eliminate the need for validation on the server side, or does it?
This product just blew my mind, since I know how difficult it is to keep up with Node dependencies. You could manually track updates of your dependencies and test whether things continue to work. But it takes a lot of effort. So most of the time, your software is in a Schrödinger state of being potentially broken, and you have no idea until you run npm install and try the next time.
Greenkeeper handles the chores of dependency management. npm install and npm test is called immediately after an update. There is no doubt about the state of your software.
Rails 4 added support for enumerations in Active Record classes. That's cool, but what's cooler is how it has been reimagined by Foraker Labs in Denver, based on the seriously underrated gem Enumerated Type.
Please go read the blog post about it right now, it'll take 5-10 minutes and I promise you won't regret it.
Today I learned about the existence of Google Chrome Net Internals, a utility that gives you extensive abilities related to debugging network activity in your browser. Used it as part of trying to diagnose why some of my Rails project links were hanging in development mode.
Damn, I can't believe that I didn't think of disabling this dubious feature sooner. Can't even begin to tell you how often an errant fingertip brush makes my Chrome history go backwards (or forwards, for that matter). Turn that shit off with the following command in your terminal.
defaults write com.google.Chrome AppleEnableMouseSwipeNavigateWithScrolls -bool NO
Make sure to restart Chrome for it to take effect.
Hadn't needed to do a clearfix in awhile and thought I would have to do something like this:
.container::after {
content:"";
display:block;
clear:both;
}
Or even worse...
.container::before, .container::after {
content:"";
display:table;
}
.container::after {
clear:both;
}
.container {
zoom:1; /* For IE 6/7 (trigger hasLayout) */
}
Then I was pleasantly surprised to learn that on modern browsers you just have to set the overflow property to auto on the containing element and you should be good to go.
.container {
overflow: auto;
}
@media print {
div {page-break-inside: avoid;}
}
Should be self-explanatory. Note that you can't use this property on absolutely positioned elements, but other than that, it pretty much works perfectly for preserving logical chunks of content in printed output.
Despite being a super common request, Capybara's API doesn't give you a way to submit forms directly (without hitting a submit button). The denial to do so is actually a principled stance, as you can read for yourself in this pull request. In a nutshell, Jonas believes its a bad practice to do so, plus there is no standard way to support the functionality across all browsers.
Workarounds exist, but seem clunky.
When you visit location /one and the server redirects you to location /two, you expect the browser’s address bar to display the redirected URL. However, Turbolinks makes requests using XMLHttpRequest, which transparently follows redirects. There’s no way for Turbolinks to tell whether a request resulted in a redirect without additional cooperation from the server.
To work around this problem, Rails sends a Turbolinks-Location header in response to a visit that was redirected using redirect_to, and Turbolinks will replace the browser’s topmost history entry with the value provided. If for some reason you are performing redirects manually (so-to-speak, without using the redirect_to helper method), then you'll have to take care of adding the header yourself.