The Simplificator blog

Fabian has a good write-up on ActionPack Variants, the rails mechanism to deal with device dependent views on the server side: want to know more

If you have been programming ruby for a while then you have seen the splat operator. It can be used to define methods that accept a variable length argument list like so:

def single_splat(an_argument, *rest)
  puts "#{rest.size} additional argument(s)" 
end

single_splat('howdy')
#=> 0 additional argument(s)

single_splat('howdy', :foo)
#=> 1 additional argument(s)

single_splat('howdy', :foo, :bar, :baz)
#=> 3 additional argument(s)

But also to "unwrap" values from an array and pass them as single arguments:

def unwrapped(a, b, c)
  puts "#{a} / #{b} / #{c}"
end

data = [1, 2, 3]

unwrapped(*data)
# => 1 / 2 / 3

unwrapped(data)
#=> wrong number of arguments (1 for 3) (ArgumentError)

But behold can use the splat operator also to coerce values into arrays:

coerced = *"Hello World"
p coerced
# => ["Hello World"]

coerced = *nil
p coerced
# => []

coerced = *[1, 2, 3]
p coerced
# => [1, 2, 3]

And of course to deconstruct arrays:

data = [1, 2, 3, 4]

first, *rest = data
puts "#{first}, #{rest}"
# => 1, [2, 3, 4]

*list, last = data
puts "#{list}, #{last}"
# => [1, 2, 3], 4

first, *center, last = data
puts "#{first}, #{center}, #{last}"
# => 1, [2, 3], 4

first, second, *center, third, fourth = data
puts "#{first}, #{second}, #{center}, #{third}, #{fourth}"
# => 1, 2, [], 3, 4

But now back to the double splat operator. It has been added to Ruby in version 2.0 and behaves similarly to the single splat operator but for hashes in argument lists:

def double_splat(**hash)
  p hash
end

double_splat()
# => {}

double_splat(a: 1)
# => {:a => 1}

double_splat(a: 1, b: 2)
# => {:a => 1, :b => 2}

double_splat('a non hash argument')
# => `double_splat': wrong number of arguments (1 for 0) (ArgumentError)
# (The message for the case where I pass in a non-hash argument is not very helpful I'd say)

"What!" I can hear you shout. Where is the difference to a standard argument. In the use case as shown above it is pretty much the same. But you would be able to pass in nil values or non hash values, so more checks would be required:

def standard_argument(hash = {})
  puts hash
end

standard_argument()
# => {}

standard_argument(nil)
# =>

Now if we move this to a more realistic use case, consider a method taking a variable list of arguments AND some options:

def extracted_options(*names, **options)
   puts "#{names} / #{options}"
end

extracted_options()
# => [] / {}

extracted_options('pascal', 'lukas', color: '#123456', offset: 3, other_option: :foo)
# => ["pascal", "lukas"] / {:color=>"#123456", :offset=>3, :other_option=>:foo}

Ruby on Rails developers might know this pattern already. It is used in various parts of the framework. It is so common that the functionality has been defined in extract_options!

Rails offers multiple ways to deal with exceptions and depending on what you want to achieve you can pick either of those solutions. Let me walk you through the possibilities.

begin/rescue block

begin/rescue blocks are the standard ruby mechanism to deal with exceptions. It might look like this:

begin
  do_something
rescue
  handle_exception
end

This works nice for exceptions that might happen in your code. But what if you want to rescue every occurrence of a specific exception, say a NoPermissionError which might be raised from your security layer? Clearly you do not want to add a begin/rescue block in all your actions just to render an error message, right?

Around filter

An around filter could be used to catch all those exceptions of a given class. Honestly I haven't used a before filter for this, this idea came to my mind when writing this blog post.

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  around_action :handle_exceptions

  private
  def handle_exceptions
    begin
      yield
    rescue NoPermissionError
      redirect_to 'permission_error'
    end
  end
end

rescue_from

rescue_from gives you the same possibilities as the around filter. It's just shorter and easier to read and if the framework offers a convenient way, then why not use it. There are multiple ways to define a handler for an exception, for a short and sweet handler I prefer the block syntax:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
 rescue_from 'NoPermissionError' do |exception|
   redirect_to 'permission_error'
 end
end

exceptions_app

There is an additional feature (added in Rails 3.2) that allows to handle exceptions. You can specify an exceptions_app which is used to handle errors. You can use your own Rails app for this:

config.exceptions_app = self.routes

If you do so, then your routing must be configured to match error codes like so:

match '/404', to: 'exceptions#handle_404'

Alternatively you can specify a lambda which receives the whole Rack env:

config.exceptions_app = lambda do |env|
  # do something
end

Do you wonder how you can call an arbitrary action when you have the env? It's pretty easy:

action = ExceptionsController.action(:render_error)
action.call(env)

In any case you want to set following configuration for exceptions_app to be used:

Rails.application.config.consider_all_requests_local = false
Rails.application.config.action_dispatch.show_exceptions = true

But where is the exception you ask? It is stored in the Rack env:

env['action_dispatch.exception']

And as a bonus: here is how you can determine an appropriate status code for an exception:

wrapper = ActionDispatch::ExceptionWrapper.new(env, exception)
wrapper.status_code

There is more information you can extract using the exception wrapper. Best you look it up in the API description.

Most of this code can be seen in action in our infrastructure gem which we use to add error pages to apps we build.

Our new laptop sleeves arrived. Every employee picked two of the five values that Simplificator stands for. Now we have nice and colorful sleeves and they convey our message.

It's always great to visit a customer and see the magnets with our five values in their offices:

• get things done
• dare to question
• love what you do
• keep it simple
• collaborate closely

We are using cancancan as an authorization gem for one of our applications. To make sure that our authorization rules are correct, we unit-tested the Ability object. In the beginning, the test was quite fast, but the more rules we added, the longer it took to run the whole model test. When we analyzed what was slowing down our test, we saw that quite some time is actually used persisting our models to the database with factory_girl as part of the test setup. It took a bit more than 60 seconds to run the whole ability spec, which is far too much for a model test.

Let's look at an excerpt of our ability and its spec:

# ability.rb

def acceptance_modes
  can [:read], AcceptanceMode
  if @user.admin?
    can [:create, :update], AcceptanceMode
    can :destroy, AcceptanceMode do |acceptance_mode|
      acceptance_mode.policies.empty?
    end
  end
end


# ability_spec.rb

describe Ability do

  let!(:admin_user) { create(:admin_user) }
  subject!(:ability) { Ability.new(admin_user) }

  context 'acceptance mode' do

    let!(:acceptance_mode) { create(:acceptance_mode) }

    before(:each) do
      create(:policy, :acceptance_mode => acceptance_mode)
    end

    [:read, :create, :update].each do |action|
      it { should be_able_to(action, acceptance_mode) }
    end

    it { should_not be_able_to(:destroy, acceptance_mode) }

  end
end


# ability_matcher.rb

module AbilityHelper
  extend RSpec::Matchers::DSL

  matcher :be_able_to do |action, object|
    match do |ability|
      ability.can?(action, object)
    end

    description do
      "be able to #{action} -- #{object.class.name}"
    end

    failure_message do |ability|
      "expected #{ability.class.name} to be able to #{action} -- #{object.class.name}"
    end

    failure_message_when_negated do |ability|
      "expected #{ability.class.name} NOT to be able to #{action} -- #{object.class.name}"
    end
  end
end

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include AbilityHelper
end

We first set up a user -- in this case it's an admin user -- and then initialize our ability object with this user. We further have a model called AcceptanceMode, which offers the usual CRUD operations. An acceptance mode has many policies. If any policy is attached to an acceptance mode, we don't want to allow it to be deleted.

Note that a lot of models are created, meaning these are persisted to the database. In this excerpt, we have 4 test cases. Each of these test cases needs to create the admin user, acceptance mode and also create a policy. This is a lot of persisted models, even more so if you realize that this is not all the acceptance mode specs and acceptance mode specs are only a small fraction of the whole ability spec. Other models are even more complex and require more tests for other dependencies.

But is this really necessary? Do we really need to persist the models or could we work with in-memory versions of these?

Let's take a look at this modified spec:

describe Ability do

  let(:stub_policy) { Policy.new }
  let!(:admin_user) { build(:admin_user) }
  subject!(:ability) { Ability.new(admin_user) }

  context 'acceptance mode' do

    let(:acceptance_mode) { build(:acceptance_mode, :policies => [stub_policy]) }

    [:read, :create, :update].each do |action|
      it { should be_able_to(action, acceptance_mode) }
    end

    it { should_not be_able_to(:destroy, acceptance_mode) }

  end
end

Note that all the create calls are replaced with build. We actually don't need the models to be persisted to the database. The ability mainly checks if the user has admin rights (with admin?), which can be tested with an in-memory version of a user. Further, the acceptance mode can be built with an array that contains an in-memory stub policy. If you look closely at the Ability implementation, you will see that that's not even necessary. Any object could reside in the array and the spec would still pass. But we decided to use an in-memory policy nonetheless.

With this approach, no model is persisted to the database. All models are in-memory but still collaborate the same way as they would have when loaded from the database first. However, no time is wasted on the database. The whole ability spec run time was reduced from 60 seconds to 5 seconds, by simply avoiding to persist models to the database in the test setup.

As an aside: there's a lot of discussions around the topic of factories and fixtures. Fixtures load a fixed set of data into the database at the start of the test suite, which avoids these kinds of problems entirely.

That's it. We hope you can re-visit some of your slow unit tests and try to use in-memory models, or avoid persisting your models for the next unit test you write!

From an article written by Christian Heilman on the "Web Application Myth".

Apps are software products with human interfaces. Web sites are that, too. The WYSIWYG dream of the 90s was telling people all they need to do is buy DreamWeaver and they’ll be able to build and be the same success as Amazon. This was nonsense.

We had a problem.

Let me call it Project X. We were six months behind. Requirements Creep resulted in enormous methods, bloated controllers, a test coverage below the belt and still no clear plan of finishing. We worked a year on the thing, it has been close to finished for months now, but it wasn't coming together. We had a problem.

Wasn’t it cool in the old days, when we were the wizards, the magicians - where just the fact that we were able to create a simple calculating form or create a script saving someone two days of busywork per week? They trusted us when we said, it is going to take three weeks to implement it. If you understood how to “fix a computer” by finding the loose cable connector on the keyboard. When running a defragmentation tool made your uncle feel like he bought a brand new machine.

It’s no longer like that. Writing software is not so magical anymore, it’s a craft. We know what we do, and we’re appreciated for it. But things have to get done. The customer is king again. We’re constantly struggling in the space between what the customer wants and what we know is the right thing. We learned a while ago that wearing a hoodie and carrying a sticker-infested laptop to a board meeting doesn’t automatically raise their respect for us. We learned to listen. We learned to learn each customer’s language, to better understand, to better craft what’s needed.

On the other hand, we still feel like wizards. We know what works, and don't want to waste our precious time with dull decoration. We want our effort limited to a minimum, working on the ambitious adventure, the principal puzzle, the real riddle. The cool stuff. Let’s write the simplest thing that can possibly work. You want more? You Ain’t Gonna Need It (YAGNI™). Because an apparently simple request might lead to days of unforeseen work, which might even go unpaid because its complexity never got onto any offer.

So we grew an instinct to say no, to approach a request with a certain defensive attitude. A feature has to pass a threshold first: Is it really needed?

But then, the customer actually pays for what we do, so saying no doesn’t fly well with them. We apparently need a different attitude.

We had a routine importing data which needed almost a day to run, and one wrongly formatted element in the source data would knock the process out. We added and tweaked, only to find the next edge case… we dearly wanted to exclude those edge cases, but many were still essential.

What was going wrong? What was the problem behind the problem?

Complexity is not value. But neither is simplicity as such. We are trained to write what’s needed, in budget, and on time. Those constraints are natural. We coders have experienced many situations where broken business models resulted in hopeless strategies, which turned into convoluted requirements. Sometimes we call it “design by committee”, where the results of a brainstorming session is translated into demands full of contradictions, wishful thinking and pies in the sky. After the session, several people “flesh out” the requirements, and the input of all participants is gathered, but never questioned.

Now try to write good code with that. We try to manage upwards, trying to filter what should never have made it into requirements.

Hence, the first draft of our company values had the line “dare to say no”.

“Dare to say no” at least tames the devil of blindly implementing what’s requested, only to find the contradictions at the very end where ideas meet reality, when bugs show up stemming from the bad design decisions above. Code is honest, code is pure. There is no handwaving, no "maybes" in code, no “mostly” or “generally” - come with unfinished ideas and you will be mercilessly punished. The wall of logic can’t be broken with sheer will, you’ll be crushed between requirements and feasibility.

But saying no doesn’t give you good code.

And Project X wasn’t finished. We saw it ourselves. We had something which worked, and somehow fulfilled requirements. But it didn’t feel right. It felt buggy and convoluted. It looked the part… We needed a reboot.

Reboot

“Dare to say no” apparently needed a reboot too. We worked on that line. And we found out what we meant by it. We wanted to be able to work on all levels of software to find the right solutions. We needed to be able to address the first decisions. Those which lead to the requirements causing trouble.

Mind you, this happens anyway - at the latest, when broken code goes in production. At this point, even the people who brainstormed the ideas will see the contradictions, because they’re now glaringly obvious. Only now the important questions get asked. Can’t we get to that knowledge earlier?

We can. It requires courage to show the contradictions, the unfinished thoughts. It requires tact and skill to identify the core requirements which clash, and talk about them. It requires a lot of guts to ask fundamental questions.

Invigorated, we addressed Project X with new energy. We started with tidying up the code. Where weird requirements held us up, we went back to the customer and asked why they wanted a certain feature, why it had to be like that. The pruning and culling resulted in a much more streamlined user experience, clean code, and somewhat to our surprise, a greatly improved relationship with the customer.

Our value became “dare to question.” Ask why, understand the answer - or ask why again. Get to the bottom of it. Find the need behind the need. Throw away what’s not necessary, make it clean - with the full understanding of the requirement.

The project is live now. We have more work coming.

Maybe we can still be wizards. We just have to learn the new magic.

Dare to question.

In order to debug a problem, which only occurred in production, we recently wanted to tweak our Rails SQL logs to only show the access to a specific table.

Here's what we did to accomplish this. We created a file initializers/filter_sql_log.rb with this content:

if Rails.env.production?
  module ActiveRecord
    class LogSubscriber
      alias :old_sql :sql

      def sql(event)
        if event.payload[:sql].include? 'users'
          old_sql(event)
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

This monkey-patches the ActiveRecord::LogSubscriber class and only delegates to the old logging method, if the SQL statement includes the string "users".

By default, SQL logging is deactivated in the Rails production environment. Therefore we needed to change config/environments/production.rb like this:

config.log_level = :debug

There are many reasons on why you should use Vagrant for your development, as described here and here.

In order to get your Rails application running in Vagrant, the VM needs to have several components installed, such as: Ruby, Rails, a database, etc. One of the most common ways to provision (install the necessary packages) your VM is via Puppet of Chef. However, not everyone knows them well, and luckily there is an easy approach, namely to use shell scripts.

In a terminal window navigate to your existing Rails application and run the following command (don't worry, Vagrant will not break your existing Rails project):

$ vagrant init
 
A `Vagrantfile` has been placed in this directory. You are now
 ready to `vagrant up` your first virtual environment! Please read
 the comments in the Vagrantfile as well as documentation on
 `vagrantup.com` for more information on using Vagrant.

Like the output mentions, the command creates a file called 'Vagrantfile' in the current directory. Open it and read through the comments in order to get familiar with the available options. You will notice that all configuration is done in Ruby.

The first thing we need to do is to instruct Vagrant which OS to install. Edit the Vagrantfile and change the line config.vm.box = "base" with

config.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64"

You can also search for available Vagrant VMs.

Next, we need to forward port 3000, in order to be able to access the Rails server in a browser outside the VM. We also want to tell Vagrant how it should provision our VM. To do that, add the next lines to the Vagrantfile:

config.vm.network 'forwarded_port', guest: 3000, host: 3000
config.vm.provision 'shell', path: 'bootstrap/bootstrap_vagrant.sh'

Now, it's time to create the file bootstrap/bootstrap_vagrant.sh inside the root folder of your Rails application. The commands we place in this file will be executed when the VM will be provisioned.

An easy way to tell the provisioning script to only install packages it didn't install already is to organize it in blocks. When a block completes it will track the progress by writing a tag to a temporary file, for instance the .provisioning-progress file.

Here is a basic example that installs Ruby (downloads the binary and compiles it):

# Install ruby
if grep -q +ruby/2.1.5 .provisioning-progress; then
  echo "--> ruby-2.1.5 is installed, moving on."
else
  echo "--> Installing ruby-2.1.5 ..."
  su vagrant -c "mkdir -p /home/vagrant/downloads; cd /home/vagrant/downloads; \
                 wget --no-check-certificate https://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.1/ruby-2.1.5.tar.gz; \
                 tar -xvf ruby-2.1.5.tar.gz; cd ruby-2.1.5; \
                 mkdir -p /home/vagrant/ruby; \
                 ./configure --prefix=/home/vagrant/ruby --disable-install-doc; \
                 make; make install"
  sudo -u vagrant printf 'export PATH=/home/vagrant/ruby/bin:$PATH\n' >> /home/vagrant/.profile
 
  su vagrant -c "echo +ruby/2.1.5 >> /home/vagrant/.provisioning-progress"
  echo "--> ruby-2.1.5 is now installed."
fi

As you can see, the script first checks the .provisioning-progress file for the tag +ruby/2.1.5. If it finds it then it skips the install (the whole block). Otherwise it installs and appends +ruby/2.1.5 to the .provisioning_progress file after it finishes. In this way, the next time you provision your VM it will detect that Ruby is already installed and will skip this block. Similarly we can group our requirements and define setup blocks:

• Set system locale
• Install core libraries
• Install a database
• Install Ruby
• Install Bundler and bundle the application
• Run the migrations

Therefore our bootstrap_vagrant.sh script will have several blocks. At this gist: https://gist.github.com/luciancancescu/57025d19da727cfdc18f you will find an example that works for a new "blog" rails application. To get started copy the entire gist to your project and begin customising it.

Important: by default the provisioning script is run as user root.

After you have the provisioning script in place you can run:

vagrant up

This will create a VM and will start provisioning it. When it finishes you can start your Rails application like:

vagrant ssh
cd /vagrant
bin/rails s

In a browser open lvh.me:3000 and you should see the homepage of your Rails application. (read more about Lvh.me here)

Note: The first time you run vagrant up it performs the provisioning. If you want to run the provisioning script again simply run vagrant provision.

Bonus 1: If you need to install something new in the VM don't to it by hand. Instead add the install commands in new block in the provisioning script file and from outside the VM run:

vagrant provision

This will print a message for each of the existing blocks saying that it is installed and will only install the new package you added.

Bonus 2: If for some reason you want to reinstall an already installed package just delete the corresponding block tag from ~/vagrant/.provisioning-progress and rerun vagrant provision.

Happy provisioning! If you have any suggestions or alternatives leave a reply in the comments box below.