Ruby on Rails - September 2023

The only Ruby on Rails newsletter you will every need!

Hey, Rubyists welcome to the September edition of Ruby on Rails Monthly. This newsletter is a few days late because I was away to perform Umrah.

Upcoming newsletters will be published on the usual date (15th of every month). With that being said, let’s jump right in!

This is

Sajjad Umar

your own Desi Developer back with all the updates in the Ruby on Rails world.

First Beta Version of Rails 7.1 is out

Dockerfiles, BYO Authentication, More Async Queries, and more!

There has been over five thousand commits made by over 800 contributors since Rails 7.0, so this release is packed with new features and improvements.

The main highlights of the announcements are:

1. Dockerfiles for new applications

2. Improvements in building your own authentication

3. More async queries for Active Record

4. Built-in support for the Trilogy MySQL adapter

5. Support for composite primary keys in Active Record

6. Enqueueing massive amounts of jobs with perform_all_later

7. Introduced config.autoload_lib and config.autoload_lib_once for Enhanced Autoloading

8. Support to Bun

Read all the details here.

Turbo 8 is dropping TypeScript

Source: GitHub

A lot of conversations and criticism around this one throughout the rails community, but DHH has said goodbye to TypeScript (Link to the PR).

Read all the details here.

Rails now ignore all env files except templates (finally!)

This will help people avoid checking in .env files with potentially sensitive tokens.

Read all the details here.

Rails now raises error when generating attribute with dangerous names

Generating a model with attributes named hash or save now raise an error, instead of generating a migration with an invalid attribute.

Read all the details here.

Explicit primary_key: option now always take priority in associations

This PR fixes the issue where the primary_key: option was ignored if the associated model had a query_constraints configured. Now primary_key: option always takes priority and only if there is no primary_key: option, the query_constraints are used to determine the association_primary_key value.

Read all the details here.

Encryption: support support_unencrypted_data at a per-attribute level

If ActiveRecord::Encryption.config.support_unencrypted_data == true, this allows you to do:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  encrypts :name, deterministic: true, support_unencrypted_data: false
  encrypts :email, deterministic: true
end

Now only the email column will allow unencrypted data (and if extend_queries is true, only email queries will get extended).

Read all the details here.

Added support for if_not_exists when adding a check constraint

The add_check_constraint method now accepts an if_not_exists option. If set to true an error won't be raised if the check constraint already exists. In addition, if_exists and if_not_exists options are transposed if set when reversing remove_check_constraint and add_check_constraint. This enables the simple creation of idempotent, non-transactional migrations.

Read all the details here.

Instrument Active Record transactions

This PR adds a new transaction.active_record event that should provide a more reliable solution for these various use cases. It includes the connection in the payload (useful, for example, in differentiating transactions to different databases).

Read all the details here.

Added "Testing View Partials" section to the Testing Guides

A “Testing View Partials” section is added to the guides that expand upon the variety of tooling available to tests that inherit from ActionView::TestCase.

Read all the details here.

Fixed unscope not working when where by tripe dot range

This change fixes unscope not working in specific case for triple dot range. For example:

Read all the details here.

Made enums validatable without raising error

This Pull Request adds :validate option for enums

If you want the enum value to be validated before saving, use the option :validate:

class Conversation < ApplicationRecord
  enum :status, %i[active archived], validate: true
end

conversation = Conversation.new

conversation.status = :unknown
conversation.valid? # => false

conversation.status = nil
conversation.valid? # => false

conversation.status = :active
conversation.valid? # => true

It is also possible to pass additional validation options:

class Conversation < ApplicationRecord
  enum :status, %i[active archived], validate: { allow_nil: true }
end

conversation = Conversation.new

conversation.status = :unknown
conversation.valid? # => false

conversation.status = nil
conversation.valid? # => true

conversation.status = :active
conversation.valid? # => true

Otherwise, ArgumentError will raise (standard current behavior):

class Conversation < ApplicationRecord
  enum :status, %i[active archived]
end

conversation = Conversation.new

conversation.status = :unknown # 'unknown' is not a valid status (ArgumentError)

Read all the details here.

Added Bun support

As mentioned before in the 7.1 beta announcement; Bun support has been added to rails. Bun is a new and viable alternative to the node.js runtime, yarn package manager, and esbuild bundler. Bun's primary differentiating characteristic is speed. It's often many multiple times faster than node.js and friends.

Since most vanilla Rails projects are looking to simply sprinkle a little JS here and there (but sometimes want a bit better more of the JS ecosystem than the import-maps provide) Bun is a really good fit and can be easily adopted by new rails projects.

Read all the details here.

Added a dedicated guide for composite primary keys

Added a dedicated guide for composite primary key usage. Most of this content was compiled from other guides/documentation for composite primary keys.

Read all the details here.

Also added support composite foreign keys via migration helpers in another PR.

Read all the details here.

Infer primary_key::id on associations with composite primary key models

Before implementing this modification, the process for establishing associations in models with composite primary keys would require the following steps:

class Order
  self.primary_key = [:shop_id, :id]

  has_many :order_agreements, primary_key: :id
end

class OrderAgreement
  belongs_to :order, primary_key: :id
end

After this change, the primary_key option no longer needs to be specified:

class Order
  self.primary_key = [:shop_id, :id]

  has_many :order_agreements
end

class OrderAgreement
  belongs_to :order
end

Read all the details here.

Fixed: simple_format with blank wrapper_tag option returns plain html tag

This PR updates the behavior of the simple_format helper, If the user passes nil or an empty string as a value for wrapper_tag it defaults to use the <p> tag for wrapping.

Read all the details here.

Changed has_secure_token default to on::initialize

Following the recent updates, the declarations for has_secure_token can now be set up to run within an "after_initialize" callback. This commit introduces a new default behavior in Rails 7.1: generating all has_secure_token values during the initialization of their associated models.

Read all the details here.

Added after_discard method to ActiveJob

This Pull Request changes no existing behavior but adds after_discard.

after_discard is called in any situation where the job is about to be discarded due to a failure. Those cases are:

• When an exception is being raised by the job without retry_on or discard_on used

• When an exception is handled by discard_on (with or without a block)

• When an exception is handled by retry_on (with or without a block), but only after the job has run out of retries for that exception

• If multiple exceptions are raised when running the after_discard blocks, then only the last exception will be raised. This behavior ensures that all blocks will be run despite exceptions

Read all the details here.

Rails now use SecureRandom.alphanumeric for SecureRandom.base36/base58

In Ruby 3.3, a new feature was introduced that enables the passing of a character list to SecureRandom.alphanumeric. This enhancement now applies SecureRandom.alphanumeric for SecureRandom.base36/base58, replacing the previously complex usage of SecureRandom.random_number/random_bytes. This results in a slightly faster solution.

Read all the details here.

Deprecated read_attribute(:id) returning the primary key

This PR deprecates read_attribute(:id) returning the primary key if the model's primary key is not the id column. Starting in Rails 7.2, read_attribute(:id) should return the value of the id column.

This commit also changes read_attribute(:id) for composite primary key models to return the value of the id column, not the composite primary key.

Read all the details here.

Deprecated passing rewhere to merge

The usage of Relation#merge(rewhere: true) is no longer necessary, as it has been the default behavior since Rails 7.0. This modification serves as a deprecation notice, and attempting to set the rewhere option will result in a warning starting in Rails 7.2 and will eventually lead to an error.

Read all the details here.

Fixed change_column not setting precision for sqlite

This commit changes the change_column method to replace the existing column without using the existing options. This ensures that precision: 6 is set consistently across adapters when change_column is used to create a datetime column.

Read all the details here.

MRSK renamed to Kamal

Due to a trademark claim, the MRSK project has been renamed to Kamal after the ancient Arab navigational tool. The new executable is now kamal and all env variables are prefixed with KAMAL_*. The new website going forward will be live at https://kamal-deploy.org.

Read all the details here.

Fixed host display when X_FORWARDED_HOST authorized

This commit addresses the issue by tweaking how the blocked host is displayed. Instead of always displaying Request#host (which will return X_FORWARDED_HOST when present whether or not that's the host being blocked), each host being blocked will be displayed on its own.

Read all the details here.

Added pattern-matching support for response.parsed_body

This commit adds coverage for those new assertions and incorporates examples into the documentation for the response.parsed_body method.

Read all the details here.

Added support for Playwright as a driver for system tests

This PR adds support for the Playwright driver to Rails.

Read all the details here.

Added generatation of config.autoload_lib(...) for new apps

With this patch, newly generated config/application.rb now include

config.autoload_lib(ignore: %w(assets tasks))

In practice, this means that new 7.1 applications autoload from lib out of the box.

Read all the details here.

Added an option to start rails console in sandbox mode by default

sandbox_by_default option is added to start rails console in sandbox mode by default. With this option turned on, --no-sandbox must be specified to start rails in non-sandbox mode.

Read all the details here.

Allowed redefining to_param delimiter using param_delimiter

This commit allows customizing the delimiter used by to_param when to_key returns multiple value. This unblocks supporting more varieties of composite primary key types in Active Record.

Read all the details here.

Sorted mailers on mailer preview page alphabetically

This PR ensures that the list of mailers on the mailer preview page are always returned in alphabetical order (by their titleized name) to make it easier to scan the list and find a specific mailer.

Read all the details here.

Use alias_attribute to provide id_value alias for id attribute

Extends on #48533.

You can now use alias_attribute to provide a uid alias for the id attribute. That was one of the primary use cases described in the above pull request; as such, we've decided to provide it out of the box in Rails.

Read all the details here.

That is it for this month; stay curious, keep coding, and mark your calendars (for the next edition) because the Ruby adventure never stops. Until then, happy coding, fellow Rails enthusiasts! ✌️