Peter Marklund's Home

Yesterday someone pointed out some features of the Rails console that I had missed out on. Here are some objects and commands to be aware of:

• reload! - reloads the application with your model classes. Useful when you've made changes to your code
• app - an ActionController::Integration::Session object that lets you run through whole integration tests from the console. Use app(true) to create a new session. Here is a sample of commands:
  • app.get("/")
  • app.assert_response :success
  • app.response
  • app.request
  • app.assert_tag
  • app.flash
  • app.assigns
  • app.assert_template
• helper - an object with all the ActionView::Helpers::* modules mixed in. Methods that you can experiment with include: link_to, url_for, pluralize, form_tag, date_select, link_to_remote. If you would like to experiment with your application helpers you can do this:

  >> class MyHelper
  >> include ApplicationHelper
  >> include all the helpers you wish to test here...
  >> end
  => MyHelper
  >> my_helper = MyHelper.new
  => #<MyHelper:0x25e2710>
  >> (my_helper.methods - Object.methods)
  => list of helper methods to play with follows...