Category Archives: ruby on rails

Ruby on Rails programming tips

Controller testing in Active Scaffold

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Problem

You need to have to functionally test your controller when you are using ActiveScaffold. There are pieces of code that tell you how to do that on a normal ror application (ie without ActiveScaffold), like recipe 7.17 on the Rails Cookbook, or a fragment of code in an Active Scaffold application, but they don’t have the full details.

Solution

Here is an attempt to give some more detailed step by step instructions on how to do it.

  1. The migration for the example customer model.
    2. class CreateCustomers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    # Create customers table
    create_table  :customers do |t|
      t.column  :customer_code, :string, :null => false
      t.column  :created_at, :datetime
      t.column  :updated_at, :datetime
    end
  end
end
  2. The customer model, with the extra function to display the customer code
    3. class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base

  has_many    :numbers

  def to_label
    "#{customer_code}"
  end
end
  3. The customer controller app/controllers/customers_controller.rb, using the Active Scaffold
    4. class CustomersController < ApplicationController

  active_scaffold :customer do |config|
    config.list.columns = [:customer_code, :numbers, :created_at, :updated_at]
    config.columns[:customer_code].inplace_edit = true
 end

end
  4. The fixtures YML file test/fixtures/customers.yml
    5. first_customer:
  id:               1
  customer_code:    123
  created_at:       2007-09-26 11:17:07
  updated_at:       2007-09-26 11:17:07

second_customer:
  id:               2
  customer_code:    456
  created_at:       2007-09-26 11:17:13
  updated_at:       2007-09-26 11:17:13
  5. And here are some functions to test some pages and a full CRUD test
    6. require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../test_helper'
require 'customers_controller'

class CustomerControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  fixtures  :customers

  def setup
    @controller = CustomersController.new
    @request = ActionController::TestRequest.new
    @response = ActionController::TestResponse.new
  end

  def test_index
    get :index
    assert_response :success
    assert_template 'list'
  end

  def test_new
    get :new
    assert_response :success
    assert_template 'create_form'
  end

  def test_edit
    get :edit, :id => customers(:first_customer).id
    assert_response :success
    assert_template 'update_form'
  end

  def test_show
    get :show, :id => customers(:first_customer).id
    assert_response :success
    assert_template 'show'
  end

  def test_customer_controller_CRUD

    # CREATE
    # Get the number of records
    record_no = Customer.count
    # Create a new record
    post  :create, {"commit"=>"Create", :record=>{"customer_code"=>"890"}}
    # Assert that the record is not nil
    assert_not_nil  assigns("record")
    # Look that the number of records has been increased by 1
    assert_equal  record_no+1, Customer.count

    # UPDATE
    # Get the number of records
    record_no = Customer.count
    # Update a record
    new_customer_code = "987"
    put :update, {"commit"=>"Update",:id=>customers(:first_customer).id,
                                      :record=>{"customer_code"=>new_customer_code}}
    # Assert that the record is not nil
    assert_not_nil  assigns("record")
    # Look that the number of records has stayed the same
    assert_equal  record_no, Customer.count
    # Check that the update took place
    customer = Customer.find(customers(:first_customer).id)
    assert_equal  new_customer_code, customer.customer_code

    # DELETE
    # Get the number of records
    record_no = Customer.count
    # Delete a record
    delete  :destroy, :id => customers(:first_customer).id
    # Look that the number of records has been decreased by 1
    assert_equal  record_no-1, Customer.count
  end

end

:int and :integer problem in Ruby on Rails migration

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After spending some time trying to make a migration work, and having the error message coming back:

You have a nil object when you didn't expect it!
You might have expected an instance of Array.
The error occurred while evaluating nil.[]

I’ve decided to do a google search for the specific problem, as it was working fine with other test migrations.

It turns out that if the migration is not model specific, but a different one (ie trying to add a new column to an existing table), the :int for the column doesn’t work!
It has to be :integer.
Full bug report and the article are here:
Migrations: :integer works, :int doesn’t – datatype discrepancy

dhtmlcalendar in ActiveScaffold

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To control the date format in dhtmlcalendar within ActiveScaffold in Ruby on Rails, to make the date of 2 November 2007 appear like 02-11-2007, use:

i) if you want to affect the settings in all the application add the following to the top of your controllers/application.rb

ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Date::Conversions::DATE_FORMAT[:default] = ‘%d-%m-%Y’
ii) If you only want to affect the settings of the calendar in one specific controller, then add the same line only to the controller that you want:

ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Date::Conversions::DATE_FORMAT[:default] = '%d-%m-%Y'

File column plugin with ActiveScaffold upload branch

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When using the file_column plugin in the active_scaffold upload branch, the documentation in the file_column doesn’t make it clear what we have to change to make it work.

In the example below the model is number and the file_column is intro.

1. In models/number.rb add:

file_column :intro

2. in controllers/numbers_controller.rb, make sure we have:

config.create.multipart = true
config.update.multipart = true

3. in helpers/numbers_helper.rb add:

def intro_form_column(record, input name)
  file_column_field 'record', :intro
end

def intro_column(record)
  record.intro ? link_to(File.basename(record.intro),
    url_for_file_column(record,'intro'), :popup => true) : "-"
end

4. in views/numbers/_intro_form_column.rhtml add:


  <%= file_column_field  'record', 'intro' %>