Linux for Rails

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Learning Rails Testing with MiniTest:Spec instead of RSpec?

If you haven't already, or if you are just starting out with Rails, now would be a good time to take a look at MiniTest:

Included with Ruby 1.9
Likely to replace Test:Unit in Rails 4
Complete Suite (Unit, Spec, Mock, Benchmark)
Fast, readable, efficient

Any other Rails beginners skip through the RSpec tests in a two-footed lunge at Michael Hartl's Rails tutorial?

With the best of intentions I didn't stand a chance:

Prior experience - my non-Ruby testing consisted of basic manual logical steps
Frustration - tests take time and I came to the tutorial to learn Rails
RSpec's alien syntax - strange snake_cased semi English

As a Rails beginner this is what I needed to know about testing before taking the tutorial:

To write efficient and elegant code we need to check its quality and stability using a testing framework
Tests are the backbone of a Rails project giving confidence to change and improve
Would you accept code into your project that isn't tested?

A year on and wanting to improve my testing code and workflow I revisited the holy grail of Rails tutorials with the plan to use MiniTest:spec in place of RSpec.

No real issues so far and couple of nice workarounds here is my GitHub repo *work in progress

Helpful Resources

MiniTest on Github
MiniTest Rdoc
MiniTest Matchers Support - GitHub
Minimalicous Testing in Ruby 1.9
MiniTest Cheat Sheet
A MiniTest::Spec Tutorial - Ruby Inside
Railscasts Pro Episode 327 MiniTest with Rails (Pro Account Needed)
Testing Rails 4 with MiniTest (upcoming book)

Please share any MiniTest resources you find and i'll update the list.

Monday, June 4, 2012

PostgreSQL setup for Rails development in Ubuntu 12.04

Rails comes with SQLite and it works out of the box with no configuration. That's great! but... its not suitable for a production environment so we need another database if your app is to see the light of day.

You could use SQLite in your development environment and switch it up for production, however, it makes far more sense to use the same database in development and production.

My personal preference is to use PostrgreSQL, its open source and gaining traction in the Rails world due to stability and rather nifty features. Heroku also uses PostgreSQL so its a good option if you plan on using their services.

See the excellent PostgreSQL Documentation for more information.

1. Install postgresql and admin tools through the package manager

sudo apt-get install postgresql libpq-dev phppgadmin pgadmin3

Change the postgresql configuration to solve this error
FATAL: Peer authentication failed for user

sudo nano /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf

Replace local peer with local md5 in the file. Then reload postgresql to apply the change.

sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql reload

2. Setup your databases from the command line

a) Login to postgresql prompt as the postgres user

sudo su postgres -c psql

b) Create a postgresql user for your project

create user username with password 'password';

TIP: If you are running tests, then to ease permission issues setup your postgres user with the same name and password as your Ubuntu user and make him a postgres superuser ( \du lists users with permissions).

alter user username superuser;

c) Create the development and test databases

create database projectname_development;
create database projectname_test;

d) Give permissions to the user on the databases

grant all privileges on database projectname_development to username;
grant all privileges on database projectname_test to username;

e) Finish your postgresql session

\q

Common MySQL commands with postgresql shortcut

MySQL	Postresql
SHOW DATABASES	\l
SHOW TABLES	\d
SHOW COLUMNS	\d table

3. Place a database configuration file in your rails project

Save the code below as app/config/database.yml and rake db:migrate your project

development:
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
database: projectname_development
pool: 5
username: username
password: password

test:
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
database: projectname_test
pool: 5
username: username
password: password

4. Misc Errors encountered

If you are importing data (or using a seed file) then you may run across this error.
PG::Error: ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "table_name_pkey"

Your import didn’t use the sequence so we need to reset it to be in sync again.

Note when replacing table_name use a plural.

sudo su postgres -c psql
\c database_name
select setval('table_name_id_seq', (select max(id) + 1 from table_name));

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

How to install Rvm, Ruby, and Rails in Ubuntu 12.04

A concise guide to get Rails running locally.

1. Install package dependencies

sudo apt-get install zlib1g zlib1g-dev build-essential
sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev openssl libssl-dev curl git
libmagick++-dev libmagick++4

2. Install rvm from Github source

bash -s stable < <(curl -s https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer)

3. Reload terminal shell

source /home/ben/.rvm/scripts/rvm

4. Add rvm to bash

echo '[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM function' >> ~/.bash_profile

5. Add any additional requirements specified by rvm

rvm requirements

copy / paste any Additional Dependencies: specified in the terminal output into sudo apt-get

6. Install ruby version to rvm

rvm install 1.9.3-p194

*Update rvm and Ruby version (useful to know)

rvm get stable
rvm list known

Troubleshooting
RVM is not a function, selecting rubies with 'rvm use ...' will not work.
Open your Terminal and select Edit > Preferences > Run command as login shell (make sure it is selected)

7. Setup default ruby version in rvm

rvm use 1.9.3-p194 --default

8. Install rails

gem install rails

9. Install RSpec

gem install rspec

10. Install Bundler

gem install bundler

If you see ERROR: Gem bundler is not installed, run `gem install bundler` first. when running bundle change https://rubygems.org to http://rubygems.org in your Gemfile.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Sublime Text 2 Setup for Rails

NB: Please see this post for Sublime Text 2 installation

After installing Sublime Text 2 these are the settings I use and packages I install to assist with Ruby on Rails development. Use all or some of these to suit your own needs.

Remove the Minimap

View > Hide Minimap

Install Package Manager

View > Show console

Copy code below / paste / enter

import urllib2,os; pf='Package Control.sublime-package'; ipp=sublime.installed_packages_path(); os.makedirs(ipp) if not os.path.exists(ipp) else None; urllib2.install_opener(urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.ProxyHandler())); open(os.path.join(ipp,pf),'wb').write(urllib2.urlopen('http://sublime.wbond.net/'+pf.replace(' ','%20')).read()); print 'Please restart Sublime Text to finish installation'

Install Ruby / Rails related Packages

Preferences > Package Control > Package Control:Install Package

ERB Insert and Toggle Commands
Rails Related Files
RubyTest
Rspec
Guard
Haml
Sass
Coffeescript

User Settings

Preferences > Settings - User

Copy code below / paste / save

{
"color_scheme": "Packages/Color Scheme - Default/railscasts.tmTheme",
"font_face": "Droid Sans Mono",
"font_size": 12,
"scroll_past_end": false,
"detect_indentation": false,
"tab_size": 2,
"translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
"trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true,
"word_wrap": true
}

Create a plugin to Open file in browser

Tools > New plugin...

Copy code below / paste / save as OpenBrowser.py

# OpenBrowser.py
import sublime, sublime_plugin
import webbrowser

class OpenBrowserCommand(sublime_plugin.TextCommand):
   def run(self,edit):
      url = self.view.file_name()
      webbrowser.open_new(url)

Add Keybindings to Open file in new browser and to insert ERB

Tools > Command Palette > "User Key bindings"