Monthly Archives: June 2012

Adding timezone information in MySQL

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Problem
You would like to convert times in MySQL with the CONVERT_TZ function and to be able to use timezone names (ie CE).

Problem

  1. Find out if your MySQL includes timezone information as it is not included by default. Log in and run : select count(*) from mysql.time_zone_name;
  2. If the result is 0 then the timezone information is not included
  3. Log out from your MySQL server on the command prompt and upgrade your server with: mysql_upgrade -p
  4. On the command prompt again load up the table with the data (linux server): mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo/ | mysql -u root -p mysql/li>
  5. Login to your MySQL server again and run the first query: select count(*) from mysql.time_zone_name;

SSL testing in rspec

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Problem
You have added the force_ssl option in your rails application, and the rspec tests fail with a redirection as ssl is required in the test evnironment.

Solution
Using a solution provided here you can add the following to your rspec test to ensure that ssl is used and the tests pass:

before(:each) do
  request.env["rack.url_scheme"] = "https"
end

Apache rewrite rule to redirect https to http for pages you don’t need https

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Problem

You are using your Rails 3.2.x application with Apache and you have setup force_ssl in one of your controllers (ie payments), that you want to force the application to use ssl. But after you set it up, and you go to one of the actions for that controller, every subsequent page you follow still uses the https protocol, even if you don’t want them to.
So you need a way to force the serving of pages in http.

Solution

You can use a redirection in your SSL apache conf file, and specify that when it doesn’t match the sections (controller,actions) you specify it should be redirected to http.
Note that RewriteCond in Apache are by default ANDed when they are in subsequent lines so you can add more conditions and that you can use [OR] if you want to perform an OR logic operation.
So by adding the following in your virtual host for the 443 port (ssl), and apply the changes it should be working as expected:

# Add https to http redirection
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/controller_you_want_ssl.*
RewriteRule (.*)  http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}