Are you a console master?
14 comments Latest by Daniel Rosenstark Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:33:45 GMT
I have a few questions.
1.) Do you know what ./script/console does?
2.) If not, why not?
3.) If so, do you have any fun tips and tricks to share with the masses?
It occured to me earlier that many people, who might have came from the PHP camp, may have never really tested their object-oriented code from some sort of interactive program. (irb) If you are coming from the Python, Java, etc worlds, interactive testing isn’t anything new. Rails is nice enough to bundle a console script right within it!
I meet people online who have never even tried to run it. There are not many tutorials on the wiki that show console… and in my opinion, its one of the coolest things about Ruby and Rails. (but, I come from the php world…)
So, if you aren’t using it… why not? got a moment? try this from the root path of your Rails application.
./script/console
It start up okay? If so, what is the name of one of your models? Let’s say that I have a model structure like:
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :orders, :dependent => true
end
class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :customer
endconsole, you can access your models and do all sorts of fun things.
>> y = Customer.find(16)
=> #<Customer:0x2743ea4 @attributes={"name"=>"Robby", "id"=>"16"}>
>> y.orders
=> [#<Order:0x27416b8 @attributes={"id"=>"18", "amount"=>"12.00", "customer_id"=>"16"}>, #<Order:0x274167c @attributes={"id"=>"19", "amount"=>"12.50", "customer_id"=>"16"}>]
Pretty neat, huh?
>> o = Order.find(18)
=> #<Order:0x273da68 @attributes={"id"=>"18", "amount"=>"12.00", "customer_id"=>"16"}>
>> o.customer.name
=> "Robby"
If you are remotely a console wizard, please share some tips and tricks for those who are not sure what to do with it. I personally find myself in console all the time that I am working with Rails, testing stuff out with my models, before I move any of the code to my application.
It sure beats, hitting refresh in your browser all day. :-)
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Hi Robby,
Like yourself, I am happy to use the console a lot. I was wondering if there is anyway to get your model objects to list only the methods that you have added and also their relationships with other model objects. For instance to get your author object to list its associated books etc.
Thanks a lot, and keep up the good work. Look forward to seeing your patch to help rails use postgres int[] arrays make it into core.
I would like to try out the console but I cannot get it to load. The console.rb file contains the following.
#!/usr/bin/env ruby require File.dirname(FILE) + ’/../config/boot’ require ‘commands/console’
When I try to load it I get this message.
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require’: no such file to load—./script/../config/../config/environment (LoadError) from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require’ from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/init.rb:252:in `load_modules’ from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/init.rb:250:in `load_modules’ from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/init.rb:21:in `setup’ from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/irb.rb:54:in `start’ from c:/ruby/bin/irb.bat:20
For Chris in comment 2:
If you are using Windows, from your root directory: ruby script/console
Here is a relevant post about how to integrate console with objects in the web session:
http://tektastic.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/ruby-on-rails-how-to-load-session-objects-into-console/
Here is a relevant post about how to integrate console with objects in the web session:
http://tektastic.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/ruby-on-rails-how-to-load-session-objects-into-console/
If you know the session_id (you can get session_id from the cookie) then you can get the data from session as described here.
If you know the session_id (you can get session_id from the cookie) then you can get the data from session as described here.
Amy Hoy has a good article which also serves as a great cheat sheet.
http://www.slash7.com/articles/2006/12/21/secrets-of-the-rails-console-ninjas
Thanks alot for this post
Hey Lance you could try,
reflect_on_all_associations(:has_many/:belongs_to)
How do I run a action in controller from ruby console.
something I do all the time to get a useful list of methods:
Foo.methods.sort.select{|a| not Object.respond_to? a}
@ajey, check out this post
http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/600
about getting into the controller. I might post something soon based on the comments in that same post.
Hi Robby, thanks for the article. Here is my short (and derivative :) article on how to get at the controller with the console…
http://compileyouidontevenknowyou.blogspot.com/2009/06/using-rails-console-for-controller.html