OmbuLabs

One of the hardest failing tests to debug are those which fail randomly, also known as “flaky” tests. You write your test cases, you run the tests in your environment (in random order), and see them all pass. Afterwards, you push your code, your CI server runs them and one test fails.

This is not an uncommon scenario, and one too common when using integration tests which use JS, with Capybara-Webkit or Selenium. But if your failing test doesn’t communicate with an external API, doesn’t use JS, and passes locally, it can be a bit nerve-wracking.

After you have identified the failing test, and it still passes after running it locally, one way to figure out why it’s failing is running its context multiple times.

To automate this process a bit, I like to use the following command:

We all know the importance of having a CI tool integrated in your project. It allows you to run your entire test suite every time you want to merge a set of changes. If you have a core project and many projects that depend on it, you want to run the tests for the core project and the dependent projects at the same time. This article explains how you can do it with Circle CI.

I have been using the capybara-webkit gem for a while now since I first tried it out after making the switch from Capybara + Selenium.

Using capybara-webkit speeds up my Selenium tests due to its headless nature, and it’s very straightforward. However, I had some trouble testing a Rails based React app.

In this post, I will explain how I worked around the issues that came up when trying to use capybara-webkit with React.

If you live in Argentina and you ever use AFIP, you should already know that their platform is not the best in terms of user friendliness. We wanted to integrate OmbuShop with AFIP (using their API) in order to generate and print the bills for each seller. Unfortunately, there is no way to do this because the API doesn’t generate a printable version (PDF) of the bill.

How many times did you come across a great gem you wanted to try out in a production console, like benchmark-ips or awesome-print?

Be it for performance or for readability, sometimes it’s nice to be able to try out something new quickly without going through a pull request + deployment process. This is possible by modifying the $LOAD_PATH Ruby global variable and requiring the gem manually.

When working on a Rails project, you may have seen present? calls on ActiveRecord relationships. This might feel natural, mostly because present? exists on all objects via ActiveSupport, so you expect the relationship to respond to it, but it’s actually not a very good idea. If all we want to do is check if the scope returns any results from the database, there are better ways than using present?.

A few weeks ago, I noticed weird output in the RSpec test suite (~4000 tests) for a Rails application:

.............................................................................................unknown OID 353414: failed to recognize type of '<field>'. It will be treated as String  ...........................................................................................................................................

This Rails app uses a PostgreSQL database. After some Googling, it turns out that this is a warning from PostgreSQL. When the database doesn’t recognize the type to use for a column, it casts to string by default.

When writing tests for services, you may sometimes want to use mock objects instead of real objects. In case you’re using ActiveRecord and real objects, your tests may hit the database and slow down your suite. The latest release of the rspec-mocks library bundled with RSpec 3 includes at least three different ways to implement a mock object.

Let’s discuss some of the differences between a spy, a double and an instance_double. First, the spy:

[1] pry(main)> require 'rspec/mocks/standalone'
=> true
[2] pry(main)> user_spy = spy(User)
=> #<Double User>
[3] pry(main)> spy.whatever_method
=> #<Double (anonymous)>

Getting started with a new project should be as simple as possible, even for someone who is not technical. As a maintainer, you must make sure that anyone can clone your project and get it up and running in a few minutes.

After you clone a project, you should follow two steps:

1. Setup
2. Start

At OmbuLabs we are big fans and happy customers of Noko. We use their widget to track all the hours that we spend on client projects, open source development, and our own products.

Today I’m happy to introduce Pecas, time tracking leaderboards for Noko! Pecas is an open source tool that integrates with your account and generates beautiful leaderboards per project and per teammate.

Here is a sample dashboard for all your projects:

On top of that, it will send you an email alert if you haven’t tracked any hours during a work day. If it’s a holiday, it won’t bother you. :)

A few times in the past I’ve had to interact with IMAP via Ruby, and wrapping your head around its API is not so easy. Not only is the IMAP API a bit obscure and cryptic, but Ruby’s IMAP documentation is not so great either.

Searching the internet for examples doesn’t yield too many results, so I’ll try to write down some of the things I’ve learned. The examples I’ll show use Gmail as the target IMAP server.

I’m a big fan of having small classes. I’m not a big fan of having huge specs for a small class/object. Every time I see an opportunity to DRY my specs, I take it.

Today I wrote a spec to make sure that we gracefully ignore SPAMmy contact requests in the OmbuLabs contact page. It initially looked like this:

test "gracefully ignores spammy requests with valid attributes" do
  @valid_contact = contacts(:two)
  attributes = @valid_contact.attributes
                             .merge(email_confirmation: @valid_contact.email)

  assert_no_difference("Contact.count") do
    post :create, contact: attributes, format: 'js'
  end

  assert_response :success
end

The new behavior adds a simple SPAM trap field that bots will usually fall for. If a bot is submitting the email_confirmation field (which is hidden by a CSS class), then it is SPAM and it gracefully ignores the request.

There are a few agile practices that I really love. Pair programming is one of them.

We try to do it as much as possible at OmbuLabs. We usually keep the sessions under two hours and try to follow a regular schedule.

When we find ourselves blocked by a code problem, we use our daily scrum to coordinate a pairing session. It’s quite a step up from rubberducking or using a cardboard programmer to find a solution to a problem.

The Joys

As a Senior developer, I find that pairing sessions are great for coaching Junior developers. I enjoy teaching them about best practices, design patterns, frameworks, languages, code style, XP, and TDD.

From the point of view of a Junior developer, I believe it’s a great opportunity to learn from someone who “has been there before”. When you program with someone with more experience, you will often learn about design patterns, elegant object-oriented solutions, tips and tricks.

I’ve always been a big fan of scratching your own itch. My latest itch was the insane amount of parking violations that I see everyday in Buenos Aires, near our office.

We decided to build a simple tool that would allow anyone with a Twitter account to report a parking violation. All you need to do is submit a geolocated tweet and a couple of photos (as evidence!)

Here is an example:

Ah, ¿no se puede estacionar en paradas de colectivo? Ya fueee... #InfractoresBA pic.twitter.com/XXmu1pdAib

— E r n e s t o (@_nesto) April 18, 2016

You can check out this tool over here: http://www.infractoresba.com.ar

This page shows all the parking violations reported by users to @InfractoresBA or with the #InfractoresBA hashtag. It’s as simple as that.

A few weeks ago, I found an interesting project called Bumbler. If your project uses Bundler, Bumbler shows you your project’s largest dependencies. When you find yourself staring at the screen after running bundle exec rails c, you may want to give this tool a try.