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Ruby on Rails 4.2 Release Notes
Highlights in Rails 4.2:
- Active Job, Action Mailer #deliver_later
- Adequate Record
- Web Console
- Foreign key support
These release notes cover only the major changes. To learn about various bug fixes and changes, please refer to the change logs or check out the list of commits in the main Rails repository on GitHub.
NOTE: This document is a work in progress, please help to improve this by sending a pull request.
Upgrading to Rails 4.2
If you're upgrading an existing application, it's a great idea to have good test coverage before going in. You should also first upgrade to Rails 4.1 in case you haven't and make sure your application still runs as expected before attempting to upgrade to Rails 4.2. A list of things to watch out for when upgrading is available in the Upgrading Ruby on Rails guide.
Major Features
Active Job, Action Mailer #deliver_later
Active Job is a new framework in Rails 4.2. It is an adapter layer on top of queuing systems like Resque, Delayed Job, Sidekiq, and more. You can write your jobs with the Active Job API, and it'll run on all these queues with no changes (it comes pre-configured with an inline runner).
Building on top of Active Job, Action Mailer now comes with a #deliver_later
method, which adds your email to be sent as a job to a queue, so it doesn't
bog down the controller or model.
The new GlobalID library makes it easy to pass Active Record objects to jobs by serializing them in a generic form. This means you no longer have to manually pack and unpack your Active Records by passing ids. Just give the job the straight Active Record object, and it'll serialize it using GlobalID, and deserialize it at run time.
Adequate Record
Adequate Record is a set of refactorings that make Active Record find
and find_by
methods and some association queries upto 2x faster.
It works by caching SQL query patterns while executing the Active Record calls. The cache helps skip parts of the computation involved in the transformation of the calls into SQL queries. More details in Aaron Patterson's post.
Nothing special has to be done to activate this feature. Most find
and find_by
calls and association queries will use it automatically. Examples:
Post.find 1 # caches query pattern
Post.find 2 # uses the cached pattern
Post.find_by_title 'first post' # caches query pattern
Post.find_by_title 'second post' # uses the cached pattern
post.comments # caches query pattern
post.comments(true) # uses cached pattern
The caching is not used in the following scenarios:
-
The model has a default scope
-
The model uses single table inheritence to inherit from another model
-
find
with a list of ids. eg:Post.find(1,2,3) OR Post.find [1,2]
-
find_by
with sql fragments:Post.find_by "published_at < ?", 2.weeks.ago
Web Console
New applications generated from Rails 4.2 now come with the Web Console gem by default.
Web Console is a set of debugging tools for your Rails application. It will add
an interactive console on every error page, a console
view helper and a VT100
compatible terminal.
The interactive console on the error pages lets you execute code where the exception originated. It's quite handy to introspect the state that led to the error.
The console
view helper launches an interactive console within the context of
the view where it is invoked.
Finally, you can launch a VT100 terminal that runs rails console
. If you need
to create or modify existing test data, you can do that straight from the
browser.
Foreign key support
The migration DSL now supports adding and removing foreign keys. They are dumped
to schema.rb
as well. At this time, only the mysql
, mysql2
and postgresql
adapters support foreign keys.
# add a foreign key to `articles.author_id` referencing `authors.id`
add_foreign_key :articles, :authors
# add a foreign key to `articles.author_id` referencing `users.lng_id`
add_foreign_key :articles, :users, column: :author_id, primary_key: "lng_id"
# remove the foreign key on `accounts.branch_id`
remove_foreign_key :accounts, :branches
# remove the foreign key on `accounts.owner_id`
remove_foreign_key :accounts, column: :owner_id
See the API documentation on add_foreign_key and remove_foreign_key for a full description.
Incompatibilities
Previously deprecated functionality has been removed. Please refer to the individual components for new deprecations in this release.
The following changes may require immediate action upon upgrade.
respond_with
/ class-level respond_to
respond_with
and the corresponding class-level respond_to
have been moved to
the responders
gem. To use the following, add gem 'responders', '~> 2.0'
to
your Gemfile:
# app/controllers/users_controller.rb
class UsersController < ApplicationController
respond_to :html, :json
def show
@user = User.find(params[:id])
respond_with @user
end
end
Instance-level respond_to
is unaffected:
# app/controllers/users_controller.rb
class UsersController < ApplicationController
def show
@user = User.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
format.html
format.json { render json: @user }
end
end
end
Production logging
The default log level in the production
environment is now :debug
. This
makes it consistent with the other environments, and ensures plenty of
information is available to diagnose problems.
It can be returned to the previous level, :info
, in the environment
configuration:
# config/environments/production.rb
# Decrease the log volume.
config.log_level = :info
HTML Sanitizer
The HTML sanitizer has been replaced with a new, more robust, implementation built upon Loofah and Nokogiri. The new sanitizer is more secure and its sanitization is more powerful and flexible.
With a new sanitization algorithm, the sanitized output will change for certain pathological inputs.
If you have particular need for the exact output of the old sanitizer, you can
add rails-deprecated_sanitizer
to your Gemfile, and it will automatically
replace the new implementation. Because it is opt-in, the legacy gem will not
give deprecation warnings.
rails-deprecated_sanitizer
will be supported for Rails 4.2 only; it will not
be maintained for Rails 5.0.
See the blog post for more detail on the changes in the new sanitizer.
assert_select
assert_select
is now based on Nokogiri, making it (TODO: betterer).
As a result, some previously-valid selectors are now unsupported. If your application is using any of these spellings, you will need to update them:
-
Values in attribute selectors may need to be quoted if they contain non-alphanumeric characters.
a[href=/] => a[href="/"] a[href$=/] => a[href$="/"]
-
DOMs built from HTML source containing invalid HTML with improperly nested elements may differ.
For example:
# content: <div><i><p></i></div> # before: assert_select('div > i') # => true assert_select('div > p') # => false assert_select('i > p') # => true # now: assert_select('div > i') # => true assert_select('div > p') # => true assert_select('i > p') # => false
-
If the data selected contains entities, the value selected for comparison used to be raw (e.g.
AT&T
), and now is evaluated (e.g.AT&T
).# content: <p>AT&T</p> # before: assert_select('p', 'AT&T') # => true assert_select('p', 'AT&T') # => false # now: assert_select('p', 'AT&T') # => true assert_select('p', 'AT&T') # => false
Railties
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Removals
- The
rails application
command has been removed without replacement. (Pull Request)
Deprecations
- Deprecated
Rails::Rack::LogTailer
without replacement. (Commit)
Notable changes
-
Introduced
web-console
in the default application Gemfile. (Pull Request) -
Added a
required
option to the model generator for associations. (Pull Request) -
Introduced an
after_bundle
callback for use in Rails templates. (Pull Request) -
Introduced the
x
namespace for defining custom configuration options:# config/environments/production.rb config.x.payment_processing.schedule = :daily config.x.payment_processing.retries = 3 config.x.super_debugger = true
These options are then available through the configuration object:
Rails.configuration.x.payment_processing.schedule # => :daily Rails.configuration.x.payment_processing.retries # => 3 Rails.configuration.x.super_debugger # => true
(Commit)
-
Introduced
Rails::Application.config_for
to load a configuration for the current environment.# config/exception_notification.yml: production: url: http://127.0.0.1:8080 namespace: my_app_production development: url: http://localhost:3001 namespace: my_app_development # config/production.rb MyApp::Application.configure do config.middleware.use ExceptionNotifier, config_for(:exception_notification) end
-
Introduced a
--skip-gems
option in the app generator to skip gems such asturbolinks
andcoffee-rails
that do not have their own specific flags. (Commit) -
Introduced a
bin/setup
script to enable automated setup code when bootstrapping an application. (Pull Request) -
Changed default value for
config.assets.digest
totrue
in development. (Pull Request) -
Introduced an API to register new extensions for
rake notes
. (Pull Request) -
Introduced
Rails.gem_version
as a convenience method to returnGem::Version.new(Rails.version)
. (Pull Request)
Action Pack
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Removals
-
respond_with
and the class-levelrespond_to
were removed from Rails and moved to theresponders
gem (version 2.0). Addgem 'responders', '~> 2.0'
to yourGemfile
to continue using these features. (Pull Request) -
Removed deprecated
AbstractController::Helpers::ClassMethods::MissingHelperError
in favor ofAbstractController::Helpers::MissingHelperError
. (Commit)
Deprecations
-
Deprecated
assert_tag
,assert_no_tag
,find_tag
andfind_all_tag
in favor ofassert_select
. (Commit) -
Deprecated support for setting the
:to
option of a router to a symbol or a string that does not contain a#
character:get '/posts', to: MyRackApp => (No change necessary) get '/posts', to: 'post#index' => (No change necessary) get '/posts', to: 'posts' => get '/posts', controller: :posts get '/posts', to: :index => get '/posts', action: :index
(Commit)
Notable changes
-
Rails will now automatically include the template's digest in ETags. (Pull Request)
-
render nothing: true
or rendering anil
body no longer add a single space padding to the response body. (Pull Request) -
Introduced the
always_permitted_parameters
option to configure which parameters are permitted globally. The default value of this configuration is['controller', 'action']
. (Pull Request) -
The
*_filter
family methods have been removed from the documentation. Their usage is discouraged in favor of the*_action
family methods:after_filter => after_action append_after_filter => append_after_action append_around_filter => append_around_action append_before_filter => append_before_action around_filter => around_action before_filter => before_action prepend_after_filter => prepend_after_action prepend_around_filter => prepend_around_action prepend_before_filter => prepend_before_action skip_after_filter => skip_after_action skip_around_filter => skip_around_action skip_before_filter => skip_before_action skip_filter => skip_action_callback
If your application currently depends on these methods, you should use the replacement
*_action
methods instead. These methods will be deprecated in the future and will eventually be removed from Rails. -
Added HTTP method
MKCALENDAR
from RFC-4791 (Pull Request) -
*_fragment.action_controller
notifications now include the controller and action name in the payload. (Pull Request) -
Segments that are passed into URL helpers are now automatically escaped. (Commit)
-
Improved the Routing Error page with fuzzy matching for route search. (Pull Request)
-
Added an option to disable logging of CSRF failures. (Pull Request)
-
When the Rails server is set to serve static assets, gzip assets will now be served if the client supports it and a pre-generated gzip file (.gz) is on disk. By default the asset pipeline generates
.gz
files for all compressible assets. Serving gzip files minimizes data transfer and speeds up asset requests. Always use a CDN if you are serving assets from your Rails server in production. (Pull Request) -
The way
assert_select
works has changed; specifically a different library is used to interpret css selectors, build the transient DOM that the selectors are applied against, and to extract the data from that DOM. These changes should only affect edge cases. Examples:- Values in attribute selectors may need to be quoted if they contain non-alphanumeric characters.
- DOMs built from HTML source containing invalid HTML with improperly nested elements may differ.
- If the data selected contains entities, the value selected for comparison
used to be raw (e.g.
AT&T
), and now is evaluated (e.g.AT&T
).
Action View
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Deprecations
-
Deprecated
AbstractController::Base.parent_prefixes
. OverrideAbstractController::Base.local_prefixes
when you want to change where to find views. (Pull Request) -
Deprecated
ActionView::Digestor#digest(name, format, finder, options = {})
. Arguments should be passed as a hash instead. (Pull Request)
Notable changes
-
Introduced a
#{partial_name}_iteration
special local variable for use with partials that are rendered with a collection. It provides access to the current state of the iteration via the#index
,#size
,#first?
and#last?
methods. (Pull Request) -
The form helpers no longer generate a
<div>
element with inline CSS around the hidden fields. (Pull Request) -
Placeholder I18n follows the same convention as
label
I18n. (Pull Request)
Action Mailer
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Deprecations
-
Deprecated
*_path
helpers in mailers. Always use*_url
helpers instead. (Pull Request) -
Deprecated
deliver
/deliver!
in favour ofdeliver_now
/deliver_now!
. (Pull Request)
Notable changes
-
Introduced
deliver_later
which enqueues a job on the application's queue to deliver emails asynchronously. (Pull Request) -
Added the
show_previews
configuration option for enabling mailer previews outside of the development environment. (Pull Request)
Active Record
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Removals
-
Removed
cache_attributes
and friends. All attributes are cached. (Pull Request) -
Removed deprecated method
ActiveRecord::Base.quoted_locking_column
. (Pull Request) -
Removed deprecated
ActiveRecord::Migrator.proper_table_name
. Use theproper_table_name
instance method onActiveRecord::Migration
instead. (Pull Request) -
Removed unused
:timestamp
type. Transparently alias it to:datetime
in all cases. Fixes inconsistencies when column types are sent outside ofActiveRecord
, such as for XML serialization. (Pull Request)
Deprecations
-
Deprecated swallowing of errors inside
after_commit
andafter_rollback
. (Pull Request) -
Deprecated calling
DatabaseTasks.load_schema
without a connection. UseDatabaseTasks.load_schema_current
instead. (Commit) -
Deprecated
Reflection#source_macro
without replacement as it is no longer needed in Active Record. (Pull Request) -
Deprecated broken support for automatic detection of counter caches on
has_many :through
associations. You should instead manually specify the counter cache on thehas_many
andbelongs_to
associations for the through records. (Pull Request) -
Deprecated
serialized_attributes
without replacement. (Pull Request) -
Deprecated returning
nil
fromcolumn_for_attribute
when no column exists. It will return a null object in Rails 5.0 (Pull Request) -
Deprecated using
.joins
,.preload
and.eager_load
with associations that depends on the instance state (i.e. those defined with a scope that takes an argument) without replacement. (Commit) -
Deprecated passing Active Record objects to
.find
or.exists?
. Call#id
on the objects first. (Commit 1, 2) -
Deprecated half-baked support for PostgreSQL range values with excluding beginnings. We currently map PostgreSQL ranges to Ruby ranges. This conversion is not fully possible because the Ruby range does not support excluded beginnings.
The current solution of incrementing the beginning is not correct and is now deprecated. For subtypes where we don't know how to increment (e.g.
#succ
is not defined) it will raise anArgumentError
for ranges with excluding beginnings.(Commit)
Notable changes
-
The PostgreSQL adapter now supports the
JSONB
datatype in PostgreSQL 9.4+. (Pull Request) -
The
#references
method in migrations now supports atype
option for specifying the type of the foreign key (e.g.:uuid
). (Pull Request) -
Added a
:required
option to singular associations, which defines a presence validation on the association. (Pull Request) -
Introduced
ActiveRecord::Base#validate!
that raisesRecordInvalid
if the record is invalid. (Pull Request) -
ActiveRecord::Base#reload
now behaves the same asm = Model.find(m.id)
, meaning that it no longer retains the extra attributes from customselect
s. (Pull Request) -
Introduced the
bin/rake db:purge
task to empty the database for the current environment. (Commit) -
ActiveRecord::Dirty
now detects in-place changes to mutable values. Serialized attributes on ActiveRecord models will no longer save when unchanged. This also works with other types such as string columns and json columns on PostgreSQL. (Pull Requests 1, 2, 3) -
Added support for
#pretty_print
inActiveRecord::Base
objects. (Pull Request) -
PostgreSQL and SQLite adapters no longer add a default limit of 255 characters on string columns. (Pull Request)
-
sqlite3:///some/path
now resolves to the absolute system path/some/path
. For relative paths, usesqlite3:some/path
instead. (Previously,sqlite3:///some/path
resolved to the relative pathsome/path
. This behaviour was deprecated on Rails 4.1). (Pull Request) -
Introduced
#validate
as an alias for#valid?
. (Pull Request) -
#touch
now accepts multiple attributes to be touched at once. (Pull Request) -
Added support for fractional seconds for MySQL 5.6 and above. (Pull Request 1, 2)
-
Added support for the
citext
column type in PostgreSQL adapter. (Pull Request) -
Added support for user-created range types in PostgreSQL adapter. (Commit)
Active Model
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Removals
- Removed deprecated
Validator#setup
without replacement. (Pull Request)
Deprecations
-
Deprecated
reset_#{attribute}
in favor ofrestore_#{attribute}
. (Pull Request) -
Deprecated
ActiveModel::Dirty#reset_changes
in favor of#clear_changes_information
. (Pull Request)
Notable changes
-
Introduced the
restore_attributes
method inActiveModel::Dirty
to restore the changed (dirty) attributes to their previous values. (Pull Request 1, 2) -
has_secure_password
no longer disallow blank passwords (i.e. passwords that contains only spaces) by default. (Pull Request) -
has_secure_password
now verifies that the given password is less than 72 characters if validations are enabled. (Pull Request) -
Introduced
#validate
as an alias for#valid?
. (Pull Request)
Active Support
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Removals
-
Removed deprecated
Numeric#ago
,Numeric#until
,Numeric#since
,Numeric#from_now
. (Commit) -
Removed deprecated string based terminators for
ActiveSupport::Callbacks
. (Pull Request)
Deprecations
-
Deprecated
Kernel#silence_stderr
,Kernel#capture
andKernel#quietly
without replacement. (Pull Request) -
Deprecated
Class#superclass_delegating_accessor
, useClass#class_attribute
instead. (Pull Request) -
Deprecated
ActiveSupport::SafeBuffer#prepend!
asActiveSupport::SafeBuffer#prepend
now performs the same function. (Pull Request)
Notable changes
-
Introduced new configuration option
active_support.test_order
for specifying the order test cases are executed. This option currently defaults to:sorted
but will be changed to:random
in Rails 5.0. ([Commit](TODO: fill me in)) -
The
travel_to
test helper now truncates theusec
component to 0. (Commit) -
Introduced
Object#itself
as an identity function. (Commit 1, 2) -
Object#with_options
can now be used without an explicit receiver. (Pull Request) -
Introduced
String#truncate_words
to truncate a string by a number of words. (Pull Request) -
Added
Hash#transform_values
andHash#transform_values!
to simplify a common pattern where the values of a hash must change, but the keys are left the same. (Pull Request) -
The
humanize
inflector helper now strips any leading underscores. (Commit) -
Introduced
Concern#class_methods
as an alternative tomodule ClassMethods
, as well asKernel#concern
to avoid themodule Foo; extend ActiveSupport::Concern; end
boilerplate. (Commit)
Credits
See the full list of contributors to Rails for the many people who spent many hours making Rails the stable and robust framework it is today. Kudos to all of them.