Wednesday, July 20, 2016
New Features in Laravel 5.2
In this article, I will take a look at the new features of Laravel 5.2 and describe them one by one. The new features are listed below:
- implicit route model binding
- form array validation
- API rate-limiting middleware
- middleware groups
- authentication scaffold
- multiple authentication guard drivers
Multiple Authentication Guard Drivers
This feature will help you, especially when you need to have Doctrine ORM Auth with multiple providers. In my projects I prefer to have admin and user authentication separate from each other; this feature will help me to achieve this easily. Let see an example config/auth.php:
//...
'guards' => [
'user' => [
'driver' => 'session',
'provider' => 'users',
],
'admin' => [
'driver' => 'session',
'provider' => 'admin',
],
'api' => [
'driver' => 'token',
'provider' => 'users',
],
],
//...
'providers' => [
'users' => [
'driver' => 'doctrine',
'model' => App\Entities\Users::class,
],
'admin' => [
'driver' => 'doctrine',
'model' => App\Entities\Admin::class,
],
],
Now, when you use Auth::attempt([...]), Laravel will call the default guard; so if you want to use a specific guard, just call with its name, such as Auth::guard('admin').
For authentication in your route group with a specific guard, you can just call the guard name:
Route::group(['middleware' =>['auth:admin']], function () {
//...
}
Sometimes, rather than a simple login in your app, you wish users to append an api_token to the end of their query string and use that to authenticate their request. The TokenGuard will let you achieve this easily.
If you want to use token authentication, first of all you need to add a 60-character unique api_token field into the database table of the selected model (entity in doctrine). Now you can easily use api guard in your app.
Implicit Route Model Binding
One of the new features of Laravel 5.2 that's very practical is route model binding. You can bind the model to your route; before this we would create it manually:
Route::get('user/{id}', function ($id) {
$user = Users::findOrFail($id);
// ...
});
Or you may do something like:
//...
$router->model('user', 'App\User');
//...
$router->get('profile/{user}', function(App\User $user) {
//
});
Laravel 5.2 makes it even easier. Just pass a parameter in the route closure, and it'll automatically treat it as a route model binding:
Route::get('user/{id}', function (App\User $user) {
//...
});
Now it is easier to bind the model to your route.
By default, Laravel uses the model's id column. But if you expect it to change the mapping, you may change your model like so:
class User extends Model
{
public function getRouteKeyName()
{
return 'UserEmail';
}
}
Eloquent implements the Illuminate\Contracts\Routing\UrlRoutable contract, so you can override the getRouteKeyName() method. It defines which column should be used to look it up from a URL.
Middleware Groups
As you can see in the above section, we have created a different guard for user and admin. In this case, if you want to assign multiple middleware to a user route group or your admin route group, Laravel 5.2 lets you create a shortcut with a key name.
In order to define the middleware group, you should modify the kernel.php in your http folder:
protected $middlewareGroups = [
//...
'admin' => [
'acl',
'web',
'auth',
]
];
And now you can easily use it in your route group.
Api Rate-Limiting Middleware
If you use the API of another application like GitHub, for requests using Basic Authentication or OAuth, you can make up to 5,000 requests per hour. This limitation is called rate limiting. If you want to have something like this in your app, you may use Laravel 5.2's new feature. Laravel 5.2 added new throttle middleware that will handle rate limiting. For example, you may have something like:
Route::group(['prefix' => 'api', 'middleware' => 'throttle'], function () {
Route::get('user', function () {
return Users::all();
});
});
By default, throttle middleware allows 60 attempts per minute in kernel.php:
//...
'api' => [
'throttle:60,1',
'auth:api',
],
You may change it as you want or even customize it for a specific router:
Route::group(['prefix' => 'api', 'middleware' => 'throttle:10,1000'], function () {
Route::get('user', function () {
return Users::all();
});
});
Authentication Scaffold
Laravel 5.2 provides a quick way to scaffold everything you need for authentication using this command:
php artisan make:auth
Using this command in your new application will make registration and login views, as well as routes for all authentications. My route file looks like:
Route::group(['middleware' => 'web'], function () {
Route::auth();
Route::get('/home', 'HomeController@index');
});
The Route::auth() method is a shortcut to defining the following routes:
// Authentication Routes...
$this->get('login', 'Auth\AuthController@showLoginForm');
$this->post('login', 'Auth\AuthController@login');
$this->get('logout', 'Auth\AuthController@logout');
// Registration Routes...
$this->get('register', 'Auth\AuthController@showRegistrationForm');
$this->post('register', 'Auth\AuthController@register');
// Password Reset Routes...
$this->get('password/reset/{token?}', 'Auth\PasswordController@showResetForm');
$this->post('password/email', 'Auth\PasswordController@sendResetLinkEmail');
$this->post('password/reset', 'Auth\PasswordController@reset');
A HomeController will also be generated, which is responsible for login requests to your application's dashboard. But you can customize or remove this controller based on the needs of your application.
Form Array Validation
One of the interesting things I have worked with is array form data in HTML. If you place something within the square brackets then the resulting array becomes associative; otherwise, it’ll be numeric:
<form action="" method="POST">
<input type="text" name="name[first]">
<input type="text" name="name[last]">
<input type="submit">
</form>
The PHP print_r($_POST) result will be:
array(
'name' => array(
'first' => ''
'last' => ''
)
)
This will help you to simplify the process of validation and working with forms. Now let's see validation for our user fields in Laravel 5.2:
public function Validator()
{
$this->validate(Request::all(), [
'name.*.first' => 'required|string',
'name.*.last' => 'string',
]);
}
You may have noticed that the shape of the validation is name.*.last, with an asterisk in the middle, which almost indicates that you could add the key of an array or anything else you may need.
Conclusion
Laravel 5.2 was a small release that may let you work better and quicker. As you may notice, many of these features are also easy to learn.
by Alireza Rahmani Khalili via Envato Tuts+ Code
Android From Scratch: How to Store Application Data Locally
When it comes to persisting application data locally, Android developers are definitely spoiled for choice. In addition to direct access to both the internal and external storage areas of an Android device, the Android platform offers SQLite databases for storing relational data, and special files for storing key-value pairs. What's more, Android apps can also use third-party databases that offer NoSQL support.
In this tutorial, I'll show you how to make use of all those storage options in your Android apps. I'll also help you understand how to pick the most appropriate storage option for your data.
1. Storing Key-Value Pairs
If you are looking for a quick way to store a few strings or numbers, you should consider using a preferences file. Android activities and services can use the getDefaultSharedPreferences() method of the PreferenceManager class to get a reference to a SharedPreferences object that can be used to both read from and write to the default preferences file.
SharedPreferences myPreferences
= PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(MyActivity.this);
To start writing to the preferences file, you must call the edit() method of the SharedPreferences object, which returns a SharedPreferences.Editor object.
SharedPreferences.Editor myEditor = myPreferences.edit();
The SharedPreferences.Editor object has several intuitive methods you can use to store new key-value pairs to the preferences file. For example, you could use the putString() method to put a key-value pair whose value is of type String. Similarly, you could use the putFloat() method to put a key-value pair whose value is of type float. The following code snippet creates three key-value pairs:
myEditor.putString("NAME", "Alice");
myEditor.putInt("AGE", 25);
myEditor.putBoolean("SINGLE?", true);
Once you've added all the pairs, you must call the commit() method of the SharedPreferences.Editor object to make them persist.
myEditor.commit();
Reading from a SharedPreferences object is a lot easier. All you need to do is call the appropriate get*() method. For example, to get a key-value pair whose value is of type String, you must call the getString() method. Here's a code snippet that retrieves all the values we added earlier:
String name = myPreferences.getString("NAME", "unknown");
int age = myPreferences.getInt("AGE", 0);
boolean isSingle = myPreferences.getBoolean("SINGLE?", false);
As you can see in the above code, as the second parameter, all the get*() methods expect a default value, which is the value that must be returned if the key is not present in the preferences file.
Note that preferences files are limited to strings and primitive data types only. If you wish to store more complex data types or binary data, you must choose a different storage option.
2. Using an SQLite Database
Every Android app can create and make use of SQLite databases to store large amounts of structured data. As you might already know, SQLite is not only light-weight, but also very fast. If you have experience working with relational database management systems and are familiar with both SQL, which is short for Structured Query Language, and JDBC, which is short for Java Database Connectivity, this might be your preferred storage option.
To create a new SQLite database, or to open one that already exists, you can use the openOrCreateDatabase() method inside your activity or service. As its arguments, you must pass the name of your database and the mode in which you want to open it. The most used mode is MODE_PRIVATE, which makes sure that the database is accessible only to your application. For example, here's how you would open or create a database called my.db:
SQLiteDatabase myDB =
openOrCreateDatabase("my.db", MODE_PRIVATE, null);
Once the database has been created, you can use the execSQL() method to run SQL statements on it. The following code shows you how to use the CREATE TABLE SQL statement to create a table called user, which has three columns:
myDB.execSQL(
"CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS user (name VARCHAR(200), age INT, is_single INT)"
);
Although it's possible to insert new rows into the table using the execSQL() method, it's better to use the insert() method instead. The insert() method expects a ContentValues object containing the values for each column of the table. A ContentValues object is very similar to a Map object and contains key-value pairs.
Here are two ContentValues objects you can use with the user table:
ContentValues row1 = new ContentValues();
row1.put("name", "Alice");
row1.put("age", 25);
row1.put("is_single", 1);
ContentValues row2 = new ContentValues();
row2.put("name", "Bob");
row2.put("age", 20);
row2.put("is_single", 0);
As you might have guessed, the keys you pass to the put() method must match the names of the columns in the table.
Once your ContentValues objects are ready, you can pass them to the insert() method along with the name of the table.
myDB.insert("user", null, row1);
myDB.insert("user", null, row2);
To query the database, you can use the rawQuery() method, which returns a Cursor object containing the results of the query.
Cursor myCursor =
myDB.rawQuery("select name, age, is_single from user", null);
A Cursor object can contain zero or more rows. The easiest way to loop through all its rows is to call its moveToNext() method inside a while loop.
To fetch the value of an individual column, you must use methods such as getString() and getInt(), which expect the index of the column. For example, here's how you would retrieve all the values you inserted in the user table:
while(myCursor.moveToNext()) {
String name = myCursor.getString(0);
int age = myCursor.getInt(1);
boolean isSingle = (myCursor.getInt(2)) == 1 ? true:false;
}
Once you have fetched all the results of your query, make sure that you call the close() method of the Cursor object in order to release all the resources it holds.
myCursor.close();
Similarly, when you have finished all your database operations, don't forget to call the close() method of the SQLiteDatabase object.
myDB.close();
3. Using the Internal Storage
Every Android app has a private internal storage directory associated with it, in which the app can store text and binary files. Files inside this directory are not accessible to the user or to other apps installed on the user's device. They are also automatically removed when the user uninstalls the app.
Before you can use the internal storage directory, you must determine its location. In order to do so, you can call the getFilesDir() method, which is available in both activities and services.
File internalStorageDir = getFilesDir();
To get a reference to a file inside the directory, you can pass the name of the file along with the location you determined. For example, here's how you would get a reference to a file called alice.csv:
File alice = new File(internalStorageDir, "alice.csv");
From this point on, you can use your knowledge of Java I/O classes and methods to read from or write to the file. The following code snippet shows you how to use a FileOutputStream object and its write() method to write to the file:
// Create file output stream
fos = new FileOutputStream(alice);
// Write a line to the file
fos.write("Alice,25,1".getBytes());
// Close the file output stream
fos.close();
4. Using the External Storage
Because the internal storage capacity of Android devices is usually fixed, and often quite limited, several Android devices support external storage media such as removable micro-SD cards. I recommend that you use this storage option for large files, such as photos and videos.
Unlike internal storage, external storage might not always be available. Therefore, you must always check if it's mounted before using it. To do so, use the getExternalStorageState() method of the Environment class.
if(Environment.getExternalStorageState()
.equals(Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED)) {
// External storage is usable
} else {
// External storage is not usable
// Try again later
}
Once you are sure that the external storage is available, you can get the path of the external storage directory for your app by calling the getExternalFilesDir() method and passing null as an argument to it. You can then use the path to reference files inside the directory. For example, here's how you would reference a file called bob.jpg in your app's external storage directory:
File bob = new File(getExternalFilesDir(null), "bob.jpg");
By asking the user to grant you the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission, you can gain read/write access to the entire file system on the external storage. You can then use well-known public directories to store your photos, movies, and other media files. The Environment class offers a method called getExternalStoragePublicDirectory() to determine the paths of those public directories.
For example, by passing the value Environment.DIRECTORY_PICTURES to the method, you can determine the path of the public directory in which you can store photos. Similarly, if you pass the value Environment.DIRECTORY_MOVIES to the method, you get the path of the public directory in which movies can be stored.
Here's how you would reference a file called bob.jpg in the public pictures directory:
File bobInPictures = new File(
Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(
Environment.DIRECTORY_PICTURES),
"bob.jpg"
);
Once you have the File object, you can again use the FileInputStream and FileOutputStream classes to read from or write to it.
Conclusion
You now know how to make the most of the local storage options provided by the Android SDK. Regardless of the storage option you choose, read/write operations can be time-consuming if large amounts of data are involved. Therefore, to make sure that the main UI thread always stays responsive, you must consider running the operations in a different thread.
To learn more about saving application data locally, refer to the official data storage API guide.
by Ashraff Hathibelagal via Envato Tuts+ Code
This Week in Mobile Web Development (#117)
|
Peter Cooper recommends
Chris Brandrick recommends
Holly Schinsky recommends
Brian Rinaldi recommendsby via Mobile Web Weekly
Rake 301
This final article looks at FileList, Pathmap, CLEAN, CLOBBER, and passing arguments. These are not super important for beginners right away, but they will certainly come in very handy at a later point—invaluable really.
Topics
- Passing Arguments
- FileList
- Pathmap
- Clean & Clobber
- For the Road
Passing Arguments
You have two options to pass arguments into Rake tasks. You can either do it by using Bash variables or by making use of Rake’s syntax itself.
ENV Variable
In case you haven’t played with Bash before—or Bash sounds like gobbledegook to you—let’s take five and start from the beginning.
Bash in your shell offers two sorts of variables: global (aka environment) variables and local ones. Both are written in uppercase. The environment variables are global ones, which means they are available in all shells and don't vanish when you close one—unlike local Bash variables, which are only available in the current shell.
Environment variables can contain data that can be used by multiple applications and are often used as a handy way to share configuration settings. In contrast to that, local Bash variables are just that, local.
In our context of using Rake, you have the ability to access both via Ruby and in effect pass variables from the command line.
FYI
Just as a little aside, if you type env or ENV in your shell, you’ll get access to a whole bunch of environment variables. I redacted the list, but for a better understanding of what environment variables are and what they include, I encourage you to run it for yourself.
Shell
env
Output
TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
TERM=screen-256color
SHELL=/bin/bash
TMUX=/private/var/folders/4z/3np9k5ks62b1xpbn_w_lmrgh0000gr/T/tmux-504/default,4146,0
EDITOR=vim
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
TMUX_PANE=%1
is_vim=echo "#{pane_current_command}" | grep -iqE "(^|\/)g?(view|n?vim?x?)(diff)?$"
...
...
...
If you want to see a list of local Bash variables, you can run set.
Shell
( set -o posix ; set ) | less
The set command gives you a lot more output, but the above shows you the relevant bits right away.
Ruby’s ENV Class Method
Ruby offers a way to use environment and local Bash variables alike via a hash-like accessor. For our needs, when we pass a variable to a Rake task, it’s going to be a local Bash variable, which you can find in the list of variables running set or a variation of it. Ruby can read it out using ENV['VARIABLE'].
Shell
rake prepare_book BOOKTITLE='Confessions of a unicorn'
What I want to make clear, though, is that this variable won’t get added to the ENV list that your system uses—the stuff that you saw calling env from the shell. To add it to that list, you would need to “export” it. This is another story, but I thought I should make this clear.
Some Rakefile
task :prepare_book do
book_title = ENV['BOOKTITLE'] || 'Working Title'
puts "Do something with the #{book_title}"
end
In this task definition, you can see how we prepared to accept or incorporate the variable passed to the task invocation. Ruby’s ENV[BASHVARIABLE] does all the heavy lifting. If BOOKTITLE had been a global environment variable, though, we could have accessed it inside this task definition as well with this syntax.
Rake Parameter Syntax
The second approach is using pure Rake syntax. You simply pass variables into square braces. That approach is better, and you can keep things more isolated. Why involve Bash if Rake is perfectly capable of handling this? Plus you don’t have any Bash variables floating around that way. If you want to pass multiple arguments into a task, it’s a lot more elegant as well.
Shell
rake "create_mi6_agent[James, Bond, 007]"
Some Rakefile
task :create_mi6_agent, [:first_name, :last_name, :number] do |t, args|
puts "Number #{args.number} is commander #{args.first_name} #{args.last_name}."
end
When you pass in more arguments than you have defined in your task, you can simply access them via args. args.extras displays an array of all the additionally passed-in parameters. args.to_a shows you all the parameters—in an array as well, of course.
FileList
In previous examples, we have been manually collecting lists of files that need some transformation. That’s tedious, right? FileList is one of those niceties that makes Rake a powerful tool. It’s just too easy to define a glob pattern for the files you need and have it automatically be up to date when you add or delete files from that destination. With that at our disposal, filtering lists can be as straightforward or as sophisticated as we need. Regular expressions are just the tip of the iceberg—although very handy, of course.
Needing lists of files to process is very common for build tools, and making it easy to deal with them is one of the strengths of Rake. FileList makes your Rakefile smaller, smarter, and capable of handling an arbitrary number of files that you don’t need to manage. You can leave Rake in charge.
So what is a FileList exactly? Think of it as an array of files that match the given pattern. It’s a specialized Ruby Array that is focused on processing lists of files—storing them as strings. Once collected, they are ready for you to iterate over and to apply transformations.
Some Rakefile
image_list = FileList['images/*.png'] => ["images/jim-weirich.png", "images/zen-rake.png"]
Managing these files by hand is one sure way to build on sand. And, of course, Rake checks the timestamps of this list and rebuilds only files that are out of date. A FileList is lazy as well. It doesn’t grab files until they are needed. If you have a bunch of file lists, they behave very sane and smart because of that. The lists that don’t get actively used are taking it easy without hitting the file system. It’s more efficient that way.
As you can see below, you can provide multiple glob patterns for the list as well.
Some Rakefile
image_list = FileList['images/*.png', 'images/*.jpg'] => ["images/happy-jim.jpg", "images/jim-weirich.png", "images/zen-rake.png"]
With large sets of files, exclusions come in very handy—for example, if we want to filter out temporary files, backup files from editors, Git files, or certain directories that are unneeded. In short, exclusion rules are for files that you don’t want in your build.
articles = Rake::FileList.new('_posts/**/*.{markdown, md}') do |files|
files.exclude('/_posts/drafts/*.{markdown, md}')
end
=> ["_posts/published/2016/2016-02-02-some-article.md", "_posts/published/2015/2015-12-12-another-article.markdown"]
We can pass the files of the FileList through its initializer, which accepts a list of file masks. You process any exclusions within the block. We simplified the list of desired file extensions via {markdown, md} to keep things DRY. Also, you can chain these exclusions as much as you need to. Here we could even conveniently check if the files included in the FileList are empty (zero?) and exclude these from the array that way.
articles = Rake::FileList.new('_posts/**/*.md') do |files|
files.exclude('/_posts/drafts/*.{markdown, md}')
files.exclude('_posts/~*')
files.exclude do |file|
File.zero?(file)
end
end
We are basically providing multiple glob patterns for collecting only files we need into the FileList. For whatever reason, you can also go the opposite way and include files into a FileList.
FL = FileList['images/*.png']
FL.include('images/private/*.jpg)
Pathmap
It’s the secret weapon of Rake and shows its true power by enabling you to manipulate file paths. It can be called on a list of files via FileList or on single files as well. Don’t forget that it works on strings, though. It’s part of an extension of Ruby’s String class.
Let’s play with a simple file and change a simple extension. We could do this with the handy ext method, of course.
Some Ruby File
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".ext("html")
# => '/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.html'
The ext method lets us replace a file extension rather easily. Let’s see what we can do with this file when we play around with pathmap, though. I think that’s the best way to show you what it has in store for you. We can achieve the same thing like this.
Some Rakefile
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%X.html')
# => '/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.html'
As you can see, this is a bit more elegant. We provide pathmap with a specification of what we need from that string via %.
%X
Using this, we get everything but the file extension. Then we simply add the extension we need. This is just scratching the surface, though. pathmap has lots of useful markers that let you be more creative. File path manipulations couldn’t be any easier with this.
%p
If you need the complete path.
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%p')
# => "mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml"
%f
If you just need the name of a given path. No directories but with the file extension.
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%f')
# => "secret_gadgets.xml"
%n
If you need file name of a given path without its file extension.
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%n')
# => "secret_gadgets"
%d
If you need just the list of directories of a given path.
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%d')
# => "mi6/q"
%x
Extracts only the file extension.
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%x')
# => ".xml"
%s
Shows you the file separator only.
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%s')
# => "/"
%nd
If you want to specify a specific number of directories that you need. Handy for deeply nested file structures.
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%1d')
# => "mi6"
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%2d')
# => "mi6/q"
You can also approach it in the reverse order by using a minus.
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%-2d')
# => "mi6/q"
"/mi6/q/secret_gadgets.xml".pathmap('%-1d')
# => "q"
As you can see, this one little method tackles all the various needs you can have with mapping one list of files to a different list of files. Attach it to a FileList and the magic kicks in. It really is a power tool for munging file names.
images = FileList['images/*.png']
thumbs = images.pathmap('thumbs/%n-thumbs%x')
Here, for example, we are taking a list of images and mapping them to new filenames by extracting the filenames and adding a -thumbs suffix plus the extracted file extension while putting them in a thumbs directory. I’m sure you will find very good use for pathmap.
Clean & Clobber
We want to be able to return a project to a pristine state. For that matter, a FileList is not only handy for prepping files that are to be transformed, but also makes it easy to collect files that you want to have cleaned after you are done with your tasks. CLEAN and CLOBBER are actually FileLists as well—they just have two very specific jobs to handle—Deletion.
Some Rakefile
require 'rake/clean'
CLEAN.include('*.intermediate_files')
CLOBBER.include('*.intermediate_files', 'built_files/*')
These two tasks are dumb, of course, and you need to feed them file lists via our handy include. When you run rake clean or rake clobber, these collected files will disappear. Since this is an optional module, you need to require it first in your Rakefile. The nice thing about CLEAN and CLOBBER is that they give you a central place to handle cleaning your build files. Sure, you could manually write Rake tasks yourself to handle this, but both CLEAN and CLOBBER solve it for you without reinventing the wheel.
We are not putting everything in a clean task because it’s handy that you can differentiate between intermediate and build files. Let’s say we needed to create HTML files in order to create final PDF versions of our Markdown files. We would include the HTML files into our CLEAN list. Both the .html and the final .pdf files would go into CLOBBER. Conceptually, the CLOBBER list is supposed to remove everything in both lists.
Why do we care about these build files? Sometimes you want to rebuild everything and wipe out old files to get a brand new build. Therefore you need a way to delete all the files that were generated while keeping the source files that are needed for the build—most often files that are under version control. It’s easy for these lists to get out of date when you solve this manually. Therefore, handling them like our good old friend FileList makes this process much more effective.
For the Road
- Components
Rake, at its essence, is for managing tasks, of course. Break them down to their most useful component pieces and build them up in order to create bigger tasks. Think OOP! The same goes for your files. Rails makes this very easy for you via tasks/lib. In other projects, you can create a directory called rakelib and build your Rake components in there. Rake loads the Rakefile and rakelib/*.rake files automatically.
- Using
rake --dry-run
If you need to run a task that is potentially destructive in some sense and you want to rather check first what this task would do, you can sort of sandbox the task. You will see the log of what it's doing without the file operations.
- KISS
Keep it simple! Rake is smart about doing the minimal amount possible. So should you be. The nice thing about Rake is that it provides a great DSL without giving you much rope to harm yourself by reinventing the wheel needlessly.
- Namespaces
Namespaces are cheap and keep you from running into conflicting task names. This is especially important if you have Rakefiles that are coming from different sources—and from multiple developers.
task :fight_bad_dude do
...
end
namespace :bond do
task :fight_bad_dude
...
end
end
- File manipulations
Make use of FileUtils and stay away from shell file manipulations inside your tasks. It’s a bit dirty when Rake makes them already directly available to you.
- Ruby commands
You can run Ruby files within Rake files. That might come in handy every once in a while.
task :some_task do ruby 'ruby_program.rb' end
- Dynamically generated tasks
Use rules if you have a lot of files instead of dynamically generated tasks. Why? Run rake -P and you will get a list all of them. That can get out of hand very, very quickly. Besides that, not using rules is often simply lacking elegance. You might not have reduced the pattern to its core yet. Most importantly, this will make reuse easier while being DRY, of course.
- Lists
Instead of defining collections for files yourself—and also updating this list—we'd rather let Rake be in charge of that. As we have seen, collecting files for your tasks is not at all complicated in Rake.
- Ruby
Make use of Ruby methods for more complex stuff. Extract methods for reuse wherever you can. Just because we are writing code in Rake files, it should not prevent us from proper encapsulation and OOP.
- Searching tasks
Shell
rake -T secret_service_agent
This, for example, will search for rake tasks with “secret_service_agent” in them. It matches the task name but not the description.
rake -W create_mi6_agent
This shows us where the task create_mi6_agent is defined.
Final Thoughts
Rake is a powerful task management and execution engine. Open-source software at its best, if you ask me. At first, I was really surprised to learn how many downloads it has amassed over the last couple of years. That this little build tool is the most popular Gem to date and has over 100 million downloads seems crazy.
But when you look deeper into what it has to offer, it becomes crystal clear in a jiffy what a master software writer Jim Weirich really was—a true Ruby hero we all should admire for his work, legacy, and passion. I’ll leave you with a nice video interview where Jim discusses Rake. There are tons of other videos of his talks available online. Go watch all of them!
by Ed Wassermann via Envato Tuts+ Code
Ortiz Leon Architects
by via Awwwards - Sites of the day