9/Mar 2020
3 min. read
You have a fresh install of Mac OS X Catalina, and all the latest updates installed. Now you want to do some web development with Ruby on Rails.
I am writing this as a reference for myself, because I go through this process frequently.
Installations Core Setup Login to iCloud Install Apps from App Store Install iTerm2 Install Franz and Telegram Install homebrew (which will also auto-install Apple’s “command line developer tools”) and some packages
24/Feb 2020
3 min. read
I upgraded to Catalina, with Homebrew & Ruby, and this is how I did it flawlessly.
Prepare If you don’t already have homebrew installed, do that first. Install all Software Updates available in the Apple Menu, up to and including Catalina.
Hardware Haven’t had any hardware issues yet.
Software In order…
Xcode The upgrade will erase your previous XCode install.
(Optional) (re)Install XCode from the App Store first. The XCode Command Line Tools will actually install fine even without XCode.
12/Feb 2020
1 min. read
oauth2 version 1.4.4 is Released
The oauth2 gem team has been working hard (93 Issues Closed, 5 remaining!) on preparing a version 2.0.0 for release. It will have some minor breaking changes, and some important bug fixes. It will have code cleanup, and new features.
But for many people version 1.4.x has been working fine, and all they need is a new version, warts and all, which fixes some bugs, adds some features, and allows them to upgrade some dependencies, particularly jwt and faraday.
29/Jan 2020
1 min. read
oauth2 version 1.4.3 is Released
The oauth2 gem team has been working hard (93 Issues Closed, 4 remaining!) on preparing a version 2.0.0 for release. It will have some minor breaking changes, and some important bug fixes. It will have code cleanup, and new features.
But for many people version 1.4.x has been working fine, and all they need is a new version, warts and all, which fixes some bugs, adds some features, and allows them to upgrade some dependencies, particularly jwt and faraday.
18/Dec 2019
4 min. read
IncludeWithRespect Find out if your include/extend hooks are misbehaving!
Why did I make this gem? Modules have hooks on include and extend, among others. These will run every time a module is included or extended into another module or class. If the hooks should only run once, (think shared state), then running them multiple times can cause difficult to trace bugs. This gem allows developers to trace modules that are re-included multiple times into other objects.
1/Oct 2019
1 min. read
oauth2 version 1.4.2 is Released
The oauth2 gem team has been working hard (82 Issues Closed, 6 remaining!) on preparing a version 2.0.0 for release. It will have some minor breaking changes, and some important bug fixes. It will have code cleanup, and new features.
But for many people version 1.4.x has been working fine, and all they need is a new version, warts and all, which allows them to upgrade some locked dependencies, particularly jwt and faraday.
16/Oct 2018
4 min. read
Month::Serializer - Integer Serialization Plugin for Month Gem Allows you to convert Month objects to Integer, and vice versa. This is useful for serializing Months into other data structures, like String, or to pass values in JSON, or send as parameters to Resque / Sidekiq jobs (which parameters are only compatible with simple JSON data types). Neither Date or Time can serialize properly to Resque/Sidekiq jobs.
13/Oct 2018
1 min. read
oauth2 version 1.4.1 is Released
The oauth2 gem team has been working hard (72 Issues Closed, 6 remaining!) on preparing a version 2.0.0 for release. It will have some minor breaking changes, and some important bug fixes. It will have code cleanup, and new features.
But for many people version 1.4.0 has been working fine, and all they need is a new version, warts and all, which allows them to upgrade some locked dependencies, particularly jwt and faraday.
6/Oct 2018
1 min. read
ENV stubbing via a shared context for more powerful tests.
Installation Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:
gem 'rspec-stubbed_env', group: :test And then execute:
$ bundle Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install rspec-stubbed_env You must configure RSpec to use the :expect syntax, or some compatible alternative.
RSpec.configure do |config| config.
1/Oct 2018
2 min. read
Allows you to use block_is_expected similarly to how you would use is_expected if a block was wrapping the subject.
This gem does one very simple thing very well. It allows you to use block_is_expected similarly to how you would use is_expected if a block was wrapping the subject. Supports the same versions of Ruby that RSpec does, 1.
23/Sep 2018
4 min. read
ActiveSupport’s Stream Silencing - Without ActiveSupport
SilentStream is an extraction of some parts of ActiveSupport’s Kernel Reporting Core Extentions.
Since July 2014 silence_stream, silence_stderr, capture, silence, and quietly have been deprecated because they are not thread safe. See that discussion in the PR where it all went down. I rely on them a lot in single threaded code, and so I plan to keep them alive.
21/Sep 2018
2 min. read
Ruby Bootstrapping Analysis
Ruby app loading slowly, or never?
Discover bootstrapping issues in Ruby by benchmarking “Kernel.require”
Installation Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:
gem 'require_bench' And then execute:
$ bundle Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install require_bench Usage Require the library where it will be loaded prior to any other requires you want to benchmark.
4/Jan 2018
2 min. read
ActiveRecord Without a Database?
Replacement for broken Class.new(ActiveRecord::Base).
Very useful in testing Rails apps, and even more so for testing gems without having to specify full blown models.
If you prefer an exceptionally hacky alternative that could also be used for real runtime code, see my other gem activerecord-tablefree!
Installation Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:
gem 'anonymous_active_record' And then execute:
6/Dec 2017
1 min. read
A Ruby wrapper for the OAuth 2.0 protocol
UPDATE 2018-10-13: Version 1.4.1 has been released!
I am now the lead maintainer of the oauth2 gem. I will work toward getting a version 2.0.0 released, which will not drop support for any currently supported Rubies. After that a 3.0.0 release will drop support for EOL Rubies.
Oauth2 gem is looking for additional maintainers.
14/Nov 2017
2 min. read
ActiveRecord Without a Database?
ActiveRecord Tablefree Models provides a simple mixin for creating models that are not bound to the database. This approach is useful for taking advantage of the features of ActiveRecord such as validation, relationships, nested_attributes, etc.
This can also be very useful in testing where a mock-like object will suffice.
This gem is exceptionally hacky.
1/Oct 2017
5 min. read
Ensures that only one job for a given queue will be running concurrently.
A semanticaly versioned Resque plugin which ensures for a given queue, that only one worker is working on a job at any given time.
Resque::Plugins::UniqueAtRuntime differs from resque-lonely_job in that it is compatible with, and can be used at the same time as, resque-solo.
2/Jun 2017
1 min. read
Gemfile Specs! New for 1.0.2 Version constraints are important. Give the Gemfile some love in your CI build
Create a spec/gemfile_spec.rb like:
Rspec.describe "Gemfile" do it("has version constraint on every gem") do requirements = GemBench::StrictVersionRequirement.new({verbose: false}) expect(requirements.list_missing_version_constraints).to eq([]) end end Then your build will fail as soon as a gem is added without a proper constraint:
Failures: 1) Gemfile has version constraint on every gem Failure/Error: expect(requirements.list_missing_version_constraints).to eq([]) expected: [] got: ["puma"] (compared using ==) # .
26/Feb 2017
1 min. read
Find WAT Dragons! New for 1.0.0 Search the Ruby source code of all the gems loaded by your Gemfile for a specified regex, to find out which gems have wat DRAGONS.
Gem: “I have no wat DRAGONS!” You: ❨╯°□°❩╯︵┻━┻
>> puts GemBench.find(look_for_regex: /wat/).starters.map {|gem| "#{gem.name} has wat DRAGONS at #{gem.stats}" }.join("\n") [GemBench] Will search for gems in ["/Users/pboling/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.4.0@foss/gems", "/Users/pboling/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.4.0@global/gems", "/Users/pboling/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.4.0@foss/bundler/gems"] [GemBench] Detected 11 loaded gems + 2 loaded gems which GemBench is configured to ignore.
4/Sep 2016
20 min. read
Ruby ORM for Amazon’s DynamoDB.
NOTE: This post has been updated for version 3 of dynamoid!
For version 1.3.x use the 1-3-stable branch README.
Installation Installing Dynamoid is pretty simple. First include the Gem in your Gemfile:
gem 'dynamoid', '~> 2' Prerequisities Dynamoid depends on the aws-sdk, and this is tested on the current version of aws-sdk (~> 3), rails (>= 4).
28/Mar 2016
3 min. read
Properly Implement ActiveRecord Transactions
Provides a method, transaction_wrapper at the class and instance levels that can be used instead of ActiveRecord#transaction. Enables you to do transactions properly, with custom rescues and retry, including with or without locking.
Installation Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:
gem 'activerecord-transactionable' And then execute:
$ bundle Or install it yourself as:
8/Mar 2016
3 min. read
“development” is not always the best name for the local environment rails_env_local, where a rails environment for local development can be anything it desires. Even a butterfly. Tell your DevOps friends.
Rails Guides has more information on the Rails initialization routines. You can easily accomplish what this gem does in a few lines of code.
… But are you going to write specs for code in your config/boot.rb file? Really?
7/Dec 2015
3 min. read
Introducing a new RubyGem celluloid-io-pg-listener (on github)
Allows you to asynchronously LISTEN for Postgresql NOTIFY messages and do something with the payloads.
Sure!
It should work if you just run bin/setup from the root directory of the gem, then you can follow along the examples in the readme.
All the data about db setup and structure is located in the spec/apps directory.
7/Dec 2015
2 min. read
What is it? See the what is it post.
Why should you use it? No migrations needed for new boolean attributes Avoids ALTER TABLE when adding a new boolean field to a model, which can be important for very large tables Only the one integer column needs to be indexed The index is actually meaningful, unlike a boolean column index Bitwise operations are fast, indexes are even faster, and you can use either one Adds scopes to easily access collections of records with specific fields Chained scopes to combine sql for different bit fields for maximum performance Provides condition builder methods for each bit field so you can construct your own custom SQL with the correct bit field values for the list.
22/Oct 2015
2 min. read
Mark specs pending or skipped for specific Ruby engine (e.g. MRI or JRuby) / version combinations.
Easiest to just show you:
it("blah is blah") do pending_for(engine: "rbx") pending_for(engine: "ruby", versions: "2.1.5") pending_for(engine: "jruby", versions: "2.2.2", reason: "due to a bug in Ruby") pending_for(engine: "ruby", versions: "2.0.0", reason: "because I don't have the time") expect("blah").to eq "blah" end Installation Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:
6/Oct 2015
1 min. read
LISTEN for Postgresql NOTIFY messages; Asynchronously process payloads
celluloid-io-pg-listener (on github)
Why? At Trumaker & Co we had a distributed data problem. Two data stores that needed to be kept synchronized, in real time, with inserts and updates allowed on both sides. There wasn’t a good solution available for that, so I did a lot of research and built celluloid-io-pg-listener to solve the problem.
30/Sep 2015
4 min. read
I upgraded to El Capitan, with Homebrew & Ruby, and this is how I did it flawlessly.
… and Xcode and Java, etc.
Prepare If you don’t already have homebrew installed, do that first, so you don’t have to deal with SIP issues. Install all Software Updates available in the Apple Menu, up to and including El Capitan.
Hardware After the installs and forced reboots my 27” Thunderbolt display wouldn’t display anything.
3/Sep 2015
2 min. read
One of the most consistent warnings that has been with me through the years has been that Nokogiri was built against a version of libXML that is different than the version that is dynamically loaded.
WARNING: Nokogiri was built against LibXML version 2.6.30, but has dynamically loaded 2.9.0 I had most recently, out of frustration, and due to sundry circumstances, resorted to the --use-system-libraries flag in my project’s bundler config just to get shit done.
15/Aug 2015
3 min. read
I have been writing RubyGems since 2008, and Rails plugins since 2005.
Contributions to the community Along the way I have contributed to many projects, including rails’ active-record (PR #20921), annotate_models (PR #473), hashie (PR #313, PR #314, PR #315, PR #316, and PR #318), git-reflow (PR #155, and PR #159), memoist (PR #33), month (PR #7), neography (PR #74 and PR #104), masonry-rails (PR #14), zues-parallel_tests (PR #28), rusen (PR #5, and PR #6), gem-release (PR #37 and PR #38), gem-dependent (PR #11), RubyGems Guides (PR #211), sidekiq-unique-jobs (PR #194), keep-a-changelog (PR #224), rchardet (PR #28), clearance (PR #769), wwtd (PR #48), capistrano-ssh-doctor (PR #11), google-drive-ruby (PR #282), subroutine (PR #4), clockwork (PR #14), ruby toolbox catalog (PR #12), amazon-awis (PR #2), and appraisal (PR #128).
18/Jun 2015
5 min. read
Performance Measured and Tuned Batch Processing of Records with Blocks in Rails.
EachInBatches (Originally BolingForBatches)
NOTE: I am resurrecting this code because I still have this recurring need, and Rail’s native batching doesn’t cut mustard.
It is some of my most ancient code, and it isn’t pretty, but I hope to improve it over time.
I often need to execute really large computations on really large data sets.
6/Aug 2013
1 min. read
Bit Fields for Active Record
What is a bit field? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_field
What is a bitwise operation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitwise_operation
flag_shih_tzu supports both :bit_operator and :in_list query modes, but only :in_list can will utilize a database index.
What does it look like? class Lead < ActiveRecord::Base include FlagShihTzu has_flags 1 => :warm_up_email_sent, 2 => :follow_up_call_made, 3 => :final_email_sent, 4 => :appointment_scheduled, 5 => :not_interested, # You can specify use any integer column to use for flags!
5/Apr 2013
9 min. read
Ruby Gemfile analysis. gem_bench is for static Gemfile and installed gem library source code analysis.
gem_bench can also be used to trim down app load times by keeping your worst players on the bench.
Gem: “Put me in coach!” You: ❨╯°□°❩╯︵┻━┻
Usage Works with Ruby >= 2.0 due to use of named parameters.
Example! Getting tired of seeing this irb warning, perhaps?
15/Aug 2012
3 min. read
Enhancer of Rails’ content_for system. Allows defaults, and no_content_for overrides in partials. For Rails 3, 4.
Why? Keep the views dry with content_for_with_default and friends! Complete flexibility in defining defaults and overrides. Remove most or all logic from views. Allow for no content to override a default. DryViews provides extensions to ActionView::Helpers::CaptureHelper, which is part of ActionPack: * content_for_with_default * no_content_for * content_for (enhanced to play nice with the above methods)
10/Nov 2009
10 min. read
An Email Condom for your Ruby Server
sanitize_email This gem allows you to override your mail delivery settings, globally or in a local context. It is like a Ruby encrusted condom for your email server, just in case it decides to have intercourse with other servers via sundry mail protocols.
Summary It’s particularly helpful when you want to prevent the delivery of email (e.
