MyFunnyDev » rails

auto escaping html in Rails to protect from XSS

Michał Kuklis — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:24:02 +0000

Tonight I found a plugin to auto escape html in order to protect from XSS attacks. I’m not sure why rails doesn’t do it out of the box (you have to use h() helper). Anyway the plugin is called xss_terminate and it can be found here. The cool thing about it is that now you can forget about h() .

daemon_controller + Thinking Sphinx

Michał Kuklis — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 06:13:02 +0000

I’ve created simple rails initiator in order to start Sphinx through daemon_controller based on the Thinking Sphinx configuration. I hope it will help somebody.

require 'daemon_controller'
 
def before_start
  if not ThinkingSphinx.define_indexes?
    config = ThinkingSphinx::Configuration.instance
    cmd = "#{config.bin_path}#{config.indexer_binary_name} --config \"#{config.config_file}\" --all"
    cmd << " --rotate" if ThinkingSphinx.sphinx_running?
    system cmd
  end
end
 
if defined?(ThinkingSphinx)
  if not ThinkingSphinx.sphinx_running? 
    conf_instance = ThinkingSphinx::Configuration.instance
    @controller = DaemonController.new(
      :identifier => 'Sphinx search server',
      :start_command => "#{conf_instance.bin_path}#{conf_instance.searchd_binary_name} --pidfile --config \"#{conf_instance.config_file}\"",
      :before_start => method(:before_start),
      :ping_command => lambda { TCPSocket.new(conf_instance.configuration.searchd.address, conf_instance.configuration.searchd.port) },
      :pid_file => conf_instance.configuration.searchd.pid_file,
      :log_file => conf_instance.configuration.searchd.log)
      @controller.start
  end
end

The Rails Initialization Process

Michał Kuklis — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:08:32 +0000

I found really nice description of rails initialization process here.

ruby maxins in rails plugins

Michał Kuklis — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:16:46 +0000

Very often when looking at the code in rails plugins you can run into this:

module Taggable 
  def self.included(base)
    base.extend(ClassMethods)
  end
  module module ClassMethods
    #methods here
  end
end

This is a part of a bigger pattern which is shown below:

module ModuleA
  def self.included(base)
    # add class methods from ModuleB
    base.extend(ModuleB)
  end
end
 
module ModuleB
  def act_as_hello
    p "hello from module B"
  end
end
 
class ClassC
 #class body here
end
 
# include moduleA in classC
ClassC.send(:include, ModuleA)
 
class ClassD < ClassC
  act_as_hello
end
 
classD = ClassD.new

The pattern is used often when developing plugins with ActiveRecord. What we gain by inheriting from ClassC (class ClassD < ClassC) are instance methods from ModuleA. This is done by:

ClassC.send(:include, ModuleA)

Moreover since ModuleA is included in ClassC, ModuleA’s initializer def self.included(base) will be invoked at the time ModuleA is mixed with ClassC. The invocation will call base.extend(ModuleB). In this case base represents ClassC which will be extended by adding class methods from ModuleB. The ModuleA’s init method is shown again below:

def self.included(base)
  # add class methods from ModuleB to ClassC
  base.extend(ModuleB)
end

At the end our ClassD has now access to all class methods defined in ModuleB. act_as_hello will be called during ClassD initialization:

class ClassD < ClassC
  act_as_hello
end

capistrano recipes for ubuntu

Michał Kuklis — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:25:22 +0000

Few nice capistrano recipes which may help you automate Ubuntu Server setup: