All posts

Nathan Broadbent

41 posts

  1. A model attribute changes across a save boundary while its previous value remains visible.

    1 min read

    Rails 5.1 ActiveModel::Dirty Changes

    You might have seen some deprecation warnings when updating to Rails 5.1+: DEPRECATION WARNING: The behavior of `attribute_changed?` inside of after callbacks will be changing in the next version of

  2. Admin resources feed a generated matrix of passing index and show tests.

    2 min read

    Dynamically Generate Controller Specs for ActiveAdmin

    I use ActiveAdmin (and the arctic_admin theme) to build DocSpring’s internal admin dashboard: ActiveAdmin has a few quirks and bugs, but I enjoy working with it overall. Some other popular

  3. An editor lists Markdown posts whose filenames begin with timestamps.

    3 min read

    Adding a Timestamp to Hugo Post Filenames

    At the time of this post, the DocSpring blog was powered by Hugo, which is an awesome static site generator. Update from April 2020: We migrated our blog to Ghost! Hugo is

  4. Ctrl and C keys restart a process inside a continuing terminal loop.

    1 min read

    How to Use Ctrl+C to Restart a Process in a Loop

    I start my Rails development processes by using AppleScript to set up iTerm2. I often need to restart my Rails processes when I change something in config/initializers, or if I add

  5. An arranged terminal workspace contains Rails, Sidekiq, webpack, and console sessions.

    4 min read

    Using AppleScript to set up iTerm2 for Rails Development

    A Rails developer often needs to start multiple processes while working on an application. You might need to run rails server, sidekiq to process background jobs, and webpack to compile your front-

  6. Independent cached Rails and webpack build layers converge into a single completed image.

    8 min read

    Fast Docker Builds for Rails and Webpack

    Caching gems, npm packages, and compiled assets in our 2018 Rails and webpack Docker build, including the tradeoffs of custom diff layers.

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