Explain to me how config works in Rails - ruby-on-rails

I have a Rails 3 application, call it "MyApp". In my config\environments\production.rb file I see such things as
MyApp::Application.configure do
config.log_level = :info
config.logger = Logger.new(config.paths.log.first, 'daily')
...or...
config.logger = Logger.new(Rails.root.join("log",Rails.env + ".log"),3,20*1024*1024)
So, questions are focusing on terminology and wtf they mean... (or point me to some site ,I have looked but not found, to explain how this works.)
MyApp is a module?
MyApp::Application is a ...? What, a module too?
MyApp::Application.configure is a method?
config is a variable? How do I see it in console?
config.logger is a ???
config.paths.log.first is a ...??
--in console I can see "MyApp::Application.configure.config.paths.log.first" but don't know what that means or how to extract info from it!?!
Is this too much for one question? :)
I have looked at the tutorial http://guides.rubyonrails.org/configuring.html but it jumps right into what things do.

A six sided question! Oh my. Let's ahem roll.1 Here's hoping I receive 6 times the upvotes for it then? :)
1. MyApp is a module?
Yes, it's a module. It acts as a "container" for all things pertaining to your application. For instance you could define a class like this:
module MyApp
class MyFunClass
def my_fun_method
end
end
end
Then if someone else has a MyFunClass, it won't interfere with your MyFunClass. It's just a nice way of separating out the code.
2. MyApp::Application is a ...? What, a module too?
MyApp::Application is actually a class, which inherits from Rails::Application. This does a quite a lot of things, including setting up the Rails.application object which is actually an instance of MyApp::Application that you can do all sorts of fun things on like making requests to your application (in a rails console or rails c session). This code for instance would make a dummy request to the root path of your application, returning a 3-sized Array which is just a plain Rack response:
Rails.application.call(Rack::MockRequest.env_for("/"))
You can also get the routes for your application by calling this:
Rails.application.routes
The main purpose of defining MyApp::Application is not these fun things that you'll probably never use, but rather so that you can define application-specific configuration inside config/application.rb. Things like what parameters are filtered, the time zone of the application or what directories should be autoloaded. These are all covered in the Configuration Guide for Rails.
3. MyApp::Application.configure is a method?
Indeed it is a method, and it allows you to add further configuration options to your application's configuration after config/application.rb has been loaded. You've probably seen this used in config/environments/development.rb or one of the other two files in that directory, but basically they all use the same options as shown in that Configuration Guide linked to earlier.
4. config is a variable? How do I see it in console?
The config "variable" is actually a method defined within the code used for Rails::Application and returns quite simply a configuration object which stores the configuration for the application.
To access it in the console, just use Rails.application.config. This will return quite a large Rails::Application::Configuration object for your viewing pleasure.
5. config.logger is a ???
The method you're referring to, I assume, comes from this line in config/environments/production.rb:
# Use a different logger for distributed setups
# config.logger = SyslogLogger.new
The method in this example is not config.logger, but rather config.logger=, which is referred to as a "setter" method in Ruby-land. The one without the equal sign is referred to as a "getter". This method sets up an alternative logger for the production environment in Rails, which then can be accessed by using Rails.logger within the console or the application itself.
This is useful if you want to output something to the logs, as you can simply call this code:
Rails.logger.info("DEBUG INFO GOES HERE")
6. config.paths.log.first is a ...?? --in console I can see "MyApp::Application.configure.config.paths.log.first" but don't know what that means or how to extract info from it!?!
Within a Rails application, you can modify the locations of certain directories. And so, this config.paths method is a way of keeping track of where these directories map to. In my entire Rails life I have never had to use or modify this variable and that can mean either one of two things:
It's not used often by Rails programmers, or;
I don't live a very varied life.
Interpret it as you will. My main point is that you're probably never going to use it either.
I hope these help you understand Rails a little more!
1 Terrible dice joke.

MyApp is a module, it's a namespace including an app you'll launch, see next line
MyApp::Application is a Class and you're running it's instances when running a Rails app
MyApp::Application.configure is a method. It passes all instructions to the class. See Ref.
config is a method or an instance variable (when set) which belongs through inheritance to Rails::Application::Configuration. See Ref.
You can see it in console doing: MyApp::Application.config
config.logger doesn't exist until you define it, so it's a Logger instance. See Ref.
config.paths.log is a Rails::Paths::Path
you can access it in console using: MyApp::Application.config.paths.log

Related

Accessing models and modules in a Rails 7 initializer

This issue relates to a need to set a Rails config variable as the application boots, and the value of that variable needs to come from data in the database (which are then modified). So, I have an initializer with something like this:
require "#{Rails.root}/lib/modules/facet_altering.rb"
include FacetAltering
Rails.application.config.reject_subjects = FacetAltering.reject
The reject method is potentially slow and calls the Subject model (which includes some concerns).
If I try to require subject.rb, application_rb and the relevant concerns from app/models then I progress a bit further, but eventually get stuck on uninitialized constant Subject::MySpecialConcern.
There might be some better way to set the reject_subjects value; I'd prefer not to run FacetAltering.reject each time the value of reject_subjects is used, though this might be an easy 'fix' if no other solution arises (at the cost of slowing things down). Or, is there another way to access these classes as the application boots?
Edit: Following on from the comment below, this is in config/application.rb:
%W[#{Rails.root}/lib/modules #{Rails.root}/test/mailers/previews].each do |path|
config.eager_load_paths << path
end
This post offered a useful clue:
Rails Model no longer available in initializer after upgrade to Rails 7.0
So, putting my code in config/application.rb as follows did the trick:
config.after_initialize do
Rails.application.config.reject_subjects = FacetAltering.reject
end
Now to find the answer to RuntimeError: Foreign key violations found in your fixture data. Ensure you aren't referring to labels that don't exist on associations. and I might be able to complete this Rails 6 -> 7 upgrade!

Dynamically override destination file of all Logger output in Rails

I am using the Apartment gem for a multi tenant Rails 5.2 app. I'm not sure that this even matters for my question but just giving some context.
Is there a way to override the Rails logger and redirect every single log entry to a file based on the tenant (database) that is being used?
Thinking... is there a method I can monkeypatch in Logger that will change the file written to dynamically?
Example: I want every error message directed to a file for that day. So at the end of a week there will be 7 dynamically generated files for errors that occurred on each specific day.
Another example: Before you write any server log message check if it is before 1pm. If it is before 1pm write it to /log/before_1.log ... if it is after 1pm write it to /log/after_1.log
Silly examples... but I want that kind of dynamic control before any line of log is written.
Thank you!
Usually the logger is usually configured per server (or per environment really) while apartment sets tenants per request - which means that in practice its not really going to work that well.
You can set the logger at any point by assigning Rails.logger to a logger instance.
Rails.logger = Logger.new(Rails.root.join('log/foo.log'), File::APPEND)
# or for multiple loggers
Rails.logger.extend(Logger.new(Rails.root.join('log/foo.log'), File::APPEND))
However its not that simple - you can't just throw that into ApplicationController and think that everything is hunky-dory - it will be called way to late and most of the entries with important stuff like the request or any errors that pop up before the controller will end up in the default log.
What you could do is write a custom piece of middleware that switches out the log:
# app/middleware/tenant_logger.rb
class TenantLogger
def initialize app
#app = app
end
def call(env)
file_name = "#{Appartment::Tenant.current}.log"
Rails.logger = Logger.new(Rails.root.join('log', file_name), File::APPEND)
#app.call(env)
end
end
And mount it after the "elevator" in the middleware stack:
Rails.application.config.middleware.insert_after Apartment::Elevators::Subdomain, TenantLogger
However as this is pretty far down in the middleware stack you will still miss quite a lot of important info logged by the middleware such as Rails::Rack::Logger.
Using the tagged logger as suggested by the Rails guides with a single file is a much better solution.

Where is a logical place to put a file flag?

In a Ruby on Rails application, where would the most logical place be to put a "file flag."
I am attempting to externalize configuration and allow the presence of a file to be the deciding factor on whether or not something shows on the webapp.
Right now, I have a file here:
lib/
deployment_enabled
Model deployment.rb
class Deployment...
...
def deployment_enabled?
Dir["#{Rails.root}/lib/deployment_enabled"].any?
end
end
Now this works of course, but i'm not sure this follows the MVC paradigms, since the lib directory should consist of scripts. I could put it in config, but again - not sure it belongs there as rails uses this for rails specific configuration, not necessarily the webapp.
I could of course put this in our database, but that require a new table to be created, and that seems unnecessary.
Where's the most logical place to put this flag file? Does Rails have a directory that's created during the generation to put these sort of files?
I suggest using the Rails tmp directory for this purpose. Then:
File.exist?("#{Rails.root}/tmp/deployment_enabled")
Phusion Passenger use this kind of mechanism too.
https://www.phusionpassenger.com/library/walkthroughs/basics/ruby/reloading_code.html#tmp-always_restart-txt
I recommend that you follow the Twelve-Factor App guidelines and keep your code separate from your configuration. In this case you are really talking about a simple boolean value, and the presence of the file is just the mechanism you use to define the value. This should be done instead through an environment variable.
Something like:
DEPLOYMENT_ENABLED=1 RAILS_ENV=production rails server
You would then use an initializer in Rails to detect the value:
# config/initializers/deployment.rb
foo if ENV['DEPLOYMENT_ENABLED']
The value can still be modified at runtime, e.g., ENV['DEPLOYMENT_ENABLED'] = 0.

How can I keep my initializer configuration from being lost in development mode?

I'm working on a Rails app that uses an engine. I'm using an initializer to configure one of my engine's controllers so that it will trigger an action in the host app. The code looks something like this:
# config/initializers/my_engine.rb
MyEngine::SomeController.after_filter proc {
# Do something in the host app
}, :only => :update
This works fine in production, but in development mode, the proc is only called on the first request. This is because the classes are getting reloaded and this configuration is lost, because it was stored in a class variable. (For example, MyEngine::SomeController is reloaded from the file it's in, and since the after_filter isn't declared there, it isn't added back on.)
Some Rails background
In development mode, Rails uses the following load strategy:
Code in the app directory is reloaded on each request, on the assumption that you're actively changing it.
Code in the lib directory, along with config/initializer files, are loaded once, when the application boots.
Initializer files are generally used for configuring gems. In the past, gems have mostly had code in the lib directory, so running their configuration once was sufficient.
How engines change things
However, Rails engines have code in the app directory: controllers, models, etc. These files are reloaded in development mode on each request. Therefore, configuration like my example above is lost.
Enter to_prepare
Rails provides config.to_prepare specifically to solve this problem: it run once in production, and on every request in development.
For example, we have this in application.rb, which works fine:
config.to_prepare do
# set up class variables (after_filters, etc)
end
However, if I have to put all my engines' configuration in application.rb, this defeats the point of config/initializers in keeping things organized.
So, for any configuration of classes in my engines' app directories, I want to put that code in files under config/initializers.
Here are my questions.
I'm unclear how to get config into scope in an initializer file. I'm thinking it would be Rails.application.config. Is that right?
Can I add add multiple to_prepare blocks? I'm afraid that calling it multiple times will overwrite previous blocks.
Update
As #Frederick Cheung mentioned, Rails.application.config.to_prepare does work in config/initializer files, and one can use as many of these as needed in the various files; each call appends its block to an array, so nothing is overwritten.
So the solution to this problem is:
# config/initializers/my_engine.rb
Rails.application.config.to_prepare do
MyEngine::SomeController.after_filter proc {
# Do something in the host app
}, :only => :update
end
One thing that still seems odd: I expected the to_prepare block to be called on every request in development mode, but instead it seems to be called randomly every 3rd request or so. I added block:
Rails.application.config.to_prepare do
Rails.logger.info "Running the prepare block!"
end
... restarted my app, and refreshed the page nine times. I only saw the message on the 1st, 5th, 7th and 9th requests. I'm not sure what explains this behavior, but it does explain why my code without the to_prepare worked intermittently in development.
You can add as many to_prepare blocks as you want - when you do config.to_prepare, Rails is doing (in configuration.rb in railties)
def to_prepare(&blk)
to_prepare_blocks << blk if blk
end
and then iterates over those blocks handing them over to ActionDispatch::Reloader, where to_prepare is implemented using ActiveSupport::Callbacks (i.e. the same thing that is used for before_save and so on). Multiple to_prepare blocks are fine.
Currently it looks like Rails iterates over to_prepare_blocks after reading application initialisers so adding to Rails.application.configuration.to_prepare should work. You may prefer to use ActionDispatch::Reloader.to_prepare.
There's nothing to stop you from doing initializer code in a file that lives in app/models.
for example
class MyClass
def self.run_me_when_the_class_is_loaded
end
end
MyClass.run_me_when_the_class_is_loaded
MyClass.run_me... will run when the class is loaded .... which is what we want, right?
Not sure if its the Rails way.... but its extremely straightforward, and does not depend on the shifting winds of Rails.

Where/How to code Constants in Rails 3 Application [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Ruby on Rails: Where to define global constants?
I am interested in doing this the "Rails Way" on a new application. I would also like to refer to constants in some sort of context to make the code more readable. I have an application where a user can request access to another users's data set. This AccessRequest can have one of the following statuses:
Review
Denied
Approved
I can see these values being used in reporting features in the future, so I want to make them constants in order to avoid any spelling or capitalization issues. I thought I would just put these in a constants.rb file in the config/initializers directory.
I would like to refer to these as AccessRequest::REVIEW. Since I already have a model called AccessRequest, does it make sense to put them there? Or wrap them in a class in a constants.rb file in the config/initializers directory? Which way is the Rails Way?
You don't need to use constants in Rails 3.It is better to use the Rails::Application singleton.
In your application.rb you can define your constante like:
module Yourapp
class Application < Rails::Application
config.access_request.review = 'xxx'
end
end
After in your code you can call
Yourapp::Application.config.access_request.review
After if you change value in each environment, You just define the config.xx in your config/environments/production.rb or other environment.
Belated reply, but posting as this answer still comes up in search results. Putting the constant in the model makes sense as the constant pertains directly to it. Using the Rails application config to store constants is incorrect.
As per the comment listed in application.rb:
# Application configuration should go into files in config/initializers
# -- all .rb files in that directory are automatically loaded
This is still valid as of Rails 3.

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