Straight from the mail room, it’s this week in Rails!

We made sure to squeeze our lone chimp with a typewriter extremely talented editor Kasper for just a few more keystrokes this week.

The result is not a novel, but it’s pretty damn close to legible.

Let’s check it out!

Featured

This week’s Rails contributors

Did you know? Rails is written by people no smarter than you (I know, low bar! 😘). They show up, Google a few things for the common good and submit patches. They even get their name on this here fancy page!

A Rails conference in the Pacific

The pacific Rails conference is rolling, from May 20th to 21st in Taipei, Taiwan. Several editors of this newsletter will be speaking, so we recommend checking it out!

thread_mattr_accessor doesn’t clash with thread-locals

Rails 5’s thread_mattr_accessor wouldn’t expose a variable set at the class level to instances and vice versa, because it generated a key that wasn’t uniform both at the class and instance level. Now it does 😁

Improved

Once more, db:migrate creates the test database.

Rails considers the test database a part of the complete dev environment, as such running db:create in development creates the test database as well. You’ll be up, running, and testing in no time.

Document Rails’ logger + formatter interface

Rails’ logger and formatter — ActiveSupport::TaggedLogging — had a habit of saying, “tag, you’re it!”, when figuring out how to glue the pieces together. With new documentation, this rigamarole is easier to suss out.

Fixed

Break up an Action Pack and Action View circular require

Spinning assigns and assert_template out into its own gem exposed a circular require in Action View and Action Pack. Good news is, adding gem 'rails-controller-testing' to your Gemfile should be hassle-free after this (though if you’re using RSpec it needs a teensy bit more setup).

Generate ApplicationMailer if it’s missing

Rails 5 adds new application wide classes to inherit from, one being ApplicationMailer. New mailers automatically inherit from said class. However, the file for it wasn’t being generated if missing. Rest assured, it now is.

Call for contributors

Improve Rails’ multi database support

Want to give back to Rails, but don’t know where to start? Here’s something to do, straight from a Rails core member. Take a stab at improving multi database support with the suggestions at the link.

Could make a great Google Summer of Code project too 😉

Wrapping Up

That’s all for This week in Rails. As always, there are plenty of things we’re not able to cover here, so take a look at the changes yourself.

Until next time!