Posts with tag rails

The Lifecycle of a Web Request

As a part of a recent job application process, I was asked a few general questions pertaining to software development. I thought I would share the questions and my answers here on my blog.

The Question #

A user browses to some URL in their browser. Please describe in as much detail as you think is appropriate the lifecycle of this request and what happens in the browser, over the network, on servers, and in the Rails application before the request completes.

Time in Ruby and ActiveRecord

How does the Ruby Time class relate to the ActiveRecord time column type?

Typecasting in Ruby and Rails

I recently had the need to typecast string values passed as query parameters to a controller action to their appropriate type. In solving this problem, I've learned a lot about Rails' typecasting layer, Ruby's typecasting methods, as well as a handful of edge cases. The result was a typecasting function that I think has a lot to offer.

An Example of an ERB Component

An example of building an "ERB component", that is, an ERB partial that has ansome flexibility around their HTML output articulated via an interface in the render call.

A function for generating HTML attribute values

How might I write a function that was as flexible as possible in its type signature, and yet still predictable and sane in its output of HTML attribute values?