Understanding Migrations
Welcome back to reinteractive’s Ruby on Rails 15 minute blog tutorial series. If you haven’t started following through the series and you’re new to Rails then you might want to start with the first post. Today we’ll be following directly on from Part 4. If you feel confident with Rails and want to learn more about building a feature that requires migrations then instructions for doing so are provided below.
In this instalment we’ll be learning more about how to manage your database structure through migrations.
The first feature we’re going to work on is the ability for Posts to have a published state. This means we can author our blog posts in the admin panel, then publish them at a later date giving us a little more control over our blogging system. Lets get started.
Application Setup
You’ll need to have been following our InstallFest blog posts starting with the first post, and have completed Admin and Markdown.
Lets dive into writing these new features.
Write a feature spec
We’ll start by writing a spec for this new feature. It’s often good to start with a feature spec since it will let you scope the new functionality without having to know all the in-depth implementation details ahead of time.
Open spec/features/managing_posts_spec.rb
and add the following scenario to
the with an existing blog post
context.
scenario 'Publishing an existing blog' do visit admin_post_path(@post) click_link 'Edit Post' check 'Published' click_button 'Update Post' expect(page).to have_content 'Post was successfully updated' expect(Post.last.published?).to be true end
When you’ve saved the spec you can run it with rspec
spec/features/managing_posts_spec.rb
. Naturally it will fail since we haven’t
implemented any of the functionality to support it yet. Lets get started with
that now.
A post can be published
rails g migration AddPublishedToPost published:boolean
Open the migration generated. It will look like but won’t be the same as
db/migrate/20130510023357_add_published_to_post.rb
and add default: false
to the change.
class AddPublishedToPost < ActiveRecord::Migration def change add_column :posts, :published, :boolean, default: false end end
After saving this we need to add these changes to our development database by running a migration. Enter the following into your terminal:
rake db:migrate
Now when we run rspec spec/features/managing_posts_spec.rb
we get a new
error:
Failures: 1) Managing blog posts as an admin user with an existing blog post Publishing an existing blog Failure/Error: expect(Post.last.published?).to be true expected: truthy value got: false # ./spec/features/managing_posts_spec.rb:62:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
What this error means is that ActiveAdmin tried to use mass-assignment to update our Post database record and we haven’t configured it to allow this. This error is helping us to protect our application from a common form of security vulnerability which you can read about in the Rails Security Guide.
To fix the error we need to open: app/admin/post.rb
and add :published
to
the permitted params as shown:
ActiveAdmin.register Post do permit_params :title, :body, :published end
The permit_params
line lists all the attributes in the model which are
accessible for mass-assignment. You can read more about this here: Strong
Parameters.
After saving app/admin/post.rb
we re-run our
spec (rspec spec/features/managing_posts_spec.rb
) and everything passes!
But… there’s a problem. Unpublished blogs are still visible to the public. We’ll need to go ahead and write another feature scenario to ensure that this rule is enforced for the public section of our application too.
Unpublished posts aren’t visible!
Open spec/features/reading_blog_spec.rb
and change the contents to be:
require 'spec_helper' feature 'Reading the Blog' do context 'for an unpublished post' do background do @post = Post.create(title: 'Unpublished Post', body: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet') end scenario 'it does not appear in the index' do visit root_path expect(page).to_not have_content 'Unpublished Post' end scenario 'it cannot be visited directly' do expect(lambda { visit post_path(@post) }).to raise_error(ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound) end end context 'for a published post' do background do @post = Post.create(title: 'Awesome Blog Post', body: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet', published: true) Post.create(title: 'Another Awesome Post', body: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet', published: true) end scenario 'Reading the blog index' do visit root_path expect(page).to have_content 'Awesome Blog Post' expect(page).to have_content 'Another Awesome Post' end scenario 'Reading an individual blog' do visit root_path click_link 'Awesome Blog Post' expect(current_path).to eq post_path(@post) end end end
What we’ve done here is split our test into two separate contexts. One for posts that are published, and one for posts that aren’t. We expect to see different behaviour from both contexts.
When we run this spec (rspec spec/features/reading_blog_spec.rb --order default
) we get two failures:
1) Reading the Blog for an unpublished post it does not appear in the index Failure/Error: expect(page).to_not have_content 'Unpublished Post' expected not to find text "Unpublished Post" in "Your Blog Name Menu Github Twitter About me Listing posts Unpublished Post Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet Powered by: rails-3-2-intro-blog Developed at: InstallFest 2013" # ./spec/features/reading_blog_spec.rb:12:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>' 2) Reading the Blog for an unpublished post it cannot be visited directly Failure/Error: }).to raise_error(ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound) expected ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound but nothing was raised # ./spec/features/reading_blog_spec.rb:18:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'
The first error here indicates that unpublished blogs appear in our blog post index, and the second indicates that the blog is directly accessible even though it hasn’t been published. Lets go and fix these problems.
Open: app/controllers/posts_controller.rb
and modify the index action to look
like:
def index @posts = Post.where(published: true) respond_to do |format| format.html # index.html.erb format.json { render json: @posts } format.atom end end
If you’re confused as to what an “action” is, it’s just a method in a controller that processes a particular request. Each request is “wired” from a URL to a controller by the routes file in your config folder.
If you then run our spec again (rspec spec/features/reading_blog_spec.rb
)
you’ll notice that the first error has gone and we’re left with only the second.
We can fix this by editing the show action.
Change the show action to look like:
def show @post = Post.where(published: true).find(params[:id]) respond_to do |format| format.html # show.html.erb format.json { render json: @post } end end
Red, Green, Refactor!
Success! Our spec now passes, but we’ve still got a little work to do. There’s
some code duplication there that we can fix. Instead of both the index
and
show
actions both using the code where(published: true)
we’d like to
move that into a method. Since it’s database query we can use an ActiveRecord
scope to
limit what is being returned to only the published posts. Open
app/models/post.rb
and update it to look like:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :comments validates_presence_of :body, :title scope :published, -> { where(published: true) } def content MarkdownService.new.render(body) end end
What we’ve done here is moved the common code from both actions into a scope on the Post model itself. If, at a future time, we need to make the published logic more complicated (ie publishing at a specific time) we only have to change one place.
Now that we’ve got a scope on the model to use we should update both actions to
use it. Update app/controllers/posts_controller.rb
to look like:
class PostsController < ApplicationController def index @posts = Post.published respond_to do |format| format.html # index.html.erb format.json { render json: @posts } format.atom end end def show @post = Post.published.find(params[:id]) respond_to do |format| format.html # show.html.erb format.json { render json: @post } end end end
Re-run our feature spec again after making this
change (rspec spec/features/reading_blog_spec.rb
) and
everything should still be working perfectly.
Cleaning up
We’ve implemented a new feature and everything seems to work. Lets run our
entire test suite just to make sure. Run: rspec --order default
.
Oh no! We have some errors to fix.
1) Posting Comments Posting a comment Failure/Error: visit post_path(@post) ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound: Couldn't find Post with id=1 [WHERE "posts"."published" = 't'] # ./app/controllers/posts_controller.rb:13:in `show' # ./spec/features/post_comments_spec.rb:10:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>' 2) Writing blog posts Writing a blog post in markdown Failure/Error: visit post_path(Post.last) ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound: Couldn't find Post with id=1 [WHERE "posts"."published" = 't'] # ./app/controllers/posts_controller.rb:13:in `show' # ./spec/features/writing_posts_spec.rb:28:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
They both look like similar errors, but we’ll deal with them one by one. First
open spec/features/post_comments_spec.rb
and notice that we’re attempting to
visit a blog post that isn’t published. Update the spec to look like:
require 'spec_helper' feature 'Posting Comments' do background do @post = Post.create(title: 'Awesome Blog Post', body: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet', published: true) end # Note this scenario doesn't test the AJAX comment posting. scenario 'Posting a comment' do visit post_path(@post) comment = 'This post is just filler text. Ripped off!' fill_in 'comment_body', with: comment click_button 'Add comment' expect(page).to have_content comment end end
Next we open spec/features/writing_posts_spec.rb
. This time we need to set
the post to be published properly. Remember that each of these feature specs is
automating a theoretical tester clicking around in a browser. An actual user
would just click the “Published” checkbox in order to make sure their new blog
post is published. Lets update the spec to reflect that:
require 'spec_helper' feature 'Writing blog posts' do background do email = 'admin@example.com' password = 'password' @admin = AdminUser.create(email: email, password: password) log_in_admin_user end def log_in_admin_user(email = 'admin@example.com', password = 'password') reset_session! visit admin_root_path fill_in 'Email', with: email fill_in 'Password', with: password click_button 'Login' end scenario 'Writing a blog post in markdown' do click_link 'Posts' click_link 'New Post' fill_in 'post_title', with: 'New Blog Post' fill_in 'post_body', with: "[Example.com link](http://example.com/)" check 'post_published' click_button 'Create Post' visit post_path(Post.last) expect(page).to have_link 'Example.com link' end end
Save that and now rerunning our test suite shows we have no errors! We’re ready to commit.
git add .
git commit -m "Posts can be published"
Posts should have an Author!
Another feature that would be awesome to have is for Posts to have an author. The author would simply be the Admin User that creates the post. We should write a test first:
Viewing a post should display the author
Open up: spec/features/reading_blog_spec.rb
and update the ‘for a published
post’ context to look like:
context 'for a published post' do background do email = 'admin@example.com' password = 'password' @admin = AdminUser.create(email: email, password: password) @post = Post.create(title: 'Awesome Blog Post', body: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet', published: true, author: @admin) Post.create(title: 'Another Awesome Post', body: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet', published: true, author: @admin) end scenario 'Reading the blog index' do visit root_path expect(page).to have_content 'Awesome Blog Post' expect(page).to have_content 'Another Awesome Post' expect(page).to have_content 'Posted by: admin@example.com' end scenario 'Reading an individual blog' do visit root_path click_link 'Awesome Blog Post' expect(current_path).to eq post_path(@post) end end
When we run this spec we get two failures which we’re going to ignore since they’re telling us we have work to do!
Running the migration and wiring up Rails
First we need to create a migration. We do this using the rails generate
command (which can be shortened to rails g
) like so:
rails g migration AddAuthorToPost author_id:integer rake db:migrate
Now open app/models/post.rb
and update it to inform Rails that a Post belongs
to an author but that the Author’s model is named “AdminUser”.
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :comments belongs_to :author, class_name: "AdminUser" validates_presence_of :body, :title scope :published, where(published: true) def content MarkdownService.new.render(body) end end
We’ll also open app/models/admin_user.rb
and do the reverse side of the
association by informing Rails that an AdminUser has many posts.
class AdminUser < ActiveRecord::Base devise :database_authenticatable, :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable has_many :posts def name email end end
We’ve also created a name method in the AdminUser so that ActiveAdmin can use that in the admin panel.
Editing the view to include the author
If we run our feature spec now with rspec spec/features/reading_blog_spec.rb
we get an error that lets us know we’re close. We don’t have the right text on
our web page.
Open: app/views/posts/_post.html.erb
and add <h3> Posted by: <%=
post.author.name %></h3>
under the <h2>
<h2><%= link_to_unless_current post.title, post %></h2> <h3> Posted by: <%= post.author.name %></h3> <%= post.content.html_safe %>
Then run our spec again and it passes! But we have a problem. When we run our full test suite we get a couple of interesting errors:
ActionView::Template::Error: undefined method `name' for nil:NilClass # ./app/views/posts/_post.html.erb:2:in `_app_views_posts__post_html_erb___569628799803112878_70171546453660'
This “undefined method x for nil:NilClass” is a very common and confusing error for newer Ruby and Rails developers. The problem is in our view and it’s in the following code:
<%= post.author.name %>
What is happenening is that some posts don’t have authors! If the author is nil, it cannot have a name so we get that error. Ultimately this error is because not all our posts have authors and we didn’t use defensive programming techniques. Let’s address our sloppy programming.
Fixing sloppy programming with tests!
Since we can’t rely on the author existing, but we can rely on the post
existing we’ll create a method on the post that returns the name of the author.
But we should write a test for this first. Open spec/models/post_spec.rb
and
add a new test to it:
describe '#author_name' do context 'when the author exists' do let(:author) { AdminUser.new } subject { Post.new(author: author).author_name } before { author.stub(:name) { "Jane Smith" } } it { should eq "Jane Smith" } end context 'when the author doesnt exist' do subject { Post.new.author_name } it { should eq "Nobody" } end end
When you run this spec (rspec spec/models/post_spec.rb
) you get the following
error:
NoMethodError: undefined method `author_name' for #<Post:0x007fef40352a28>
Which is expected since you haven’t made the author_name method yet in your
Post model. Open app/models/post.rb
and update the Post model to look like:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base attr_accessible :body, :title, :published, :author, :author_id has_many :comments belongs_to :author, class_name: "AdminUser" validates_presence_of :body, :title scope :published, where(published: true) def content MarkdownService.new.render(body) end def author_name if author author.name else "Nobody" end end end
Now when we run our post_model_spec.rb
again we get no errors.
Next we need to update our Admin panel to allow users to set the author on
posts. First we update the ‘writing blog posts’ scenario in our tests in
spec/features/writing_posts_spec.rb
to look like this:
require 'spec_helper' feature 'Writing blog posts' do .... scenario 'Writing a blog post in markdown' do click_link 'Posts' click_link 'New Post' select('admin@example.com', from: 'Author') fill_in 'post_title', with: 'New Blog Post' fill_in 'post_body', with: "[Example.com link](http://example.com/)" check 'post_published' click_button 'Create Post' visit post_path(Post.last) page.should have_link 'Example.com link' expect(page).to have_content 'Posted by: admin@example.com' end end
Then we make them pass by opening app/admin/post.rb
and adding :author
and
:author_id
to the permitted params as shown:
ActiveAdmin.register Post do permit_params :title, :body, :published, :author, :author_id end
All that’s left to do now is update our view too!
Open app/views/posts/_post.html.erb
and set the contents to be:
<h2><%= link_to_unless_current post.title, post %></h2> <h3> Posted by: <%= post.author_name %></h3> <%= post.content.html_safe %>
You’ll notice that instead of calling the author model directly we’re using the method we just created instead. Let’s run our entire test suite now to check that everything is now okay.
Cleaning up
Our tests all pass and we’ve implemented a new feature. It’s time to commit our code again.
git add .
git commit -m "posts can have an author"
Review
In this article we implemented two features both of which required a database migration. We wrote tests for the functionality we wanted to implement and fixed some problems that occured along the way.
Next Steps
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