Configuring Rails Applications
This guide covers the configuration and initialization features available to Rails applications. By referring to this guide, you will be able to:
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Adjust the behavior of your Rails applications
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Add additional code to be run at application start time
1. Locations for Initialization Code
preinitializers environment.rb first env-specific files initializers (load_application_initializers) after-initializer
2. Using a Preinitializer
3. Initialization Process Settings
4. Configuring Rails Components
4.1. Configuring Active Record
ActiveRecord::Base includej a variety of configuration options:
logger accepts a logger conforming to the interface of Log4r or the default Ruby 1.8+ Logger class, which is then passed on to any new database connections made. You can retrieve this logger by calling logger on either an ActiveRecord model class or an ActiveRecord model instance. Set to nil to disable logging.
primary_key_prefix_type lets you adjust the naming for primary key columns. By default, Rails assumes that primary key columns are named id (and this configuration option doesn't need to be set.) There are two other choices:
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:table_name would make the primary key for the Customer class customerid
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:table_name_with_underscore would make the primary key for the Customer class customer_id
table_name_prefix lets you set a global string to be prepended to table names. If you set this to northwest_, then the Customer class will look for northwest_customers as its table. The default is an empty string.
table_name_suffix lets you set a global string to be appended to table names. If you set this to _northwest, then the Customer class will look for customers_northwest as its table. The default is an empty string.
pluralize_table_names specifies whether Rails will look for singular or plural table names in the database. If set to true (the default), then the Customer class will use the customers table. If set to false, then the Customers class will use the customer table.
colorize_logging (true by default) specifies whether or not to use ANSI color codes when logging information from ActiveRecord.
default_timezone determines whether to use Time.local (if set to :local) or Time.utc (if set to :utc) when pulling dates and times from the database. The default is :local.
schema_format controls the format for dumping the database schema to a file. The options are :ruby (the default) for a database-independent version that depends on migrations, or :sql for a set of (potentially database-dependent) SQL statements.
timestamped_migrations controls whether migrations are numbered with serial integers or with timestamps. The default is true, to use timestamps, which are preferred if there are multiple developers working on the same application.
lock_optimistically controls whether ActiveRecord will use optimistic locking. By default this is true.
The MySQL adapter adds one additional configuration option:
ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::MysqlAdapter.emulate_booleans controls whether ActiveRecord will consider all tinyint(1) columns in a MySQL database to be booleans. By default this is true.
The schema dumper adds one additional configuration option:
ActiveRecord::SchemaDumper.ignore_tables accepts an array of tables that should not be included in any generated schema file. This setting is ignored unless ActiveRecord::Base.schema_format == :ruby.
4.2. Configuring Action Controller
ActionController::Base includes a number of configuration settings:
asset_host provides a string that is prepended to all of the URL-generating helpers in AssetHelper. This is designed to allow moving all javascript, CSS, and image files to a separate asset host.
consider_all_requests_local is generally set to true during development and false during production; if it is set to true, then any error will cause detailed debugging information to be dumped in the HTTP response. For finer-grained control, set this to false and implement local_request? to specify which requests should provide debugging information on errors.
allow_concurrency should be set to true to allow concurrent (threadsafe) action processing. Set to false by default.
param_parsers provides an array of handlers that can extract information from incoming HTTP requests and add it to the params hash. By default, parsers for multipart forms, URL-encoded forms, XML, and JSON are active.
default_charset specifies the default character set for all renders. The default is "utf-8".
logger accepts a logger conforming to the interface of Log4r or the default Ruby 1.8+ Logger class, which is then used to log information from Action Controller. Set to nil to disable logging.
resource_action_separator gives the token to be used between resources and actions when building or interpreting RESTful URLs. By default, this is "/".
resource_path_names is a hash of default names for several RESTful actions. By default, the new action is named new and the edit action is named edit.
request_forgery_protection_token sets the token parameter name for RequestForgery. Calling protect_from_forgery sets it to :authenticity_token by default.
optimise_named_routes turns on some optimizations in generating the routing table. It is set to true by default.
use_accept_header sets the rules for determining the response format. If this is set to true (the default) then respond_to and Request#format will take the Accept header into account. If it is set to false then the request format will be determined solely by examining params[:format]. If there is no format parameter, then the response format will be either HTML or Javascript depending on whether the request is an AJAX request.
allow_forgery_protection enables or disables CSRF protection. By default this is false in test mode and true in all other modes.
relative_url_root can be used to tell Rails that you are deploying to a subdirectory. The default is ENV[RAILS_RELATIVE_URL_ROOT].
The caching code adds two additional settings:
ActionController::Caching::Pages.page_cache_directory sets the directory where Rails will create cached pages for your web server. The default is Rails.public_path (which is usually set to RAILS_ROOT "/public"+).
ActionController::Caching::Pages.page_cache_extension sets the extension to be used when generating pages for the cache (this is ignored if the incoming request already has an extension). The default is .html.
The dispatcher includes one setting:
ActionController::Dispatcher.error_file_path gives the path where Rails will look for error files such as 404.html. The default is Rails.public_path.
The Active Record session store can also be configured:
CGI::Session::ActiveRecordStore::Session.data_column_name sets the name of the column to use to store session data. By default it is data
4.3. Configuring Action View
4.4. Configuring Action Mailer
4.5. Configuring Active Resource
4.6. Configuring Active Support
5. Using Initializers
organization, controlling load order
6. Using an After-Initializer
7. Rails Environment Settings
ENV
8. Changelog
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November 5, 2008: Rough outline by Mike Gunderloy
actionmailer/lib/action_mailer/base.rb 257: cattr_accessor :logger 267: cattr_accessor :smtp_settings 273: cattr_accessor :sendmail_settings 276: cattr_accessor :raise_delivery_errors 282: cattr_accessor :perform_deliveries 285: cattr_accessor :deliveries 288: cattr_accessor :default_charset 291: cattr_accessor :default_content_type 294: cattr_accessor :default_mime_version 297: cattr_accessor :default_implicit_parts_order 299: cattr_reader :protected_instance_variables
actionmailer/Rakefile 36: rdoc.options << —line-numbers << —inline-source << -A cattr_accessor=object
actionpack/lib/action_controller/base.rb 263: cattr_reader :protected_instance_variables 273: cattr_accessor :asset_host 279: cattr_accessor :consider_all_requests_local 285: cattr_accessor :allow_concurrency 317: cattr_accessor :param_parsers 321: cattr_accessor :default_charset 325: cattr_accessor :logger 329: cattr_accessor :resource_action_separator 333: cattr_accessor :resources_path_names 337: cattr_accessor :request_forgery_protection_token 341: cattr_accessor :optimise_named_routes 351: cattr_accessor :use_accept_header 361: cattr_accessor :relative_url_root
actionpack/lib/action_controller/caching/pages.rb 55: cattr_accessor :page_cache_directory 58: cattr_accessor :page_cache_extension
actionpack/lib/action_controller/caching.rb 37: cattr_reader :cache_store 48: cattr_accessor :perform_caching
actionpack/lib/action_controller/dispatcher.rb 98: cattr_accessor :error_file_path
actionpack/lib/action_controller/mime_type.rb 24: cattr_reader :html_types, :unverifiable_types
actionpack/lib/action_controller/rescue.rb 36: base.cattr_accessor :rescue_responses 40: base.cattr_accessor :rescue_templates
actionpack/lib/action_controller/session/active_record_store.rb 60: cattr_accessor :data_column_name 170: cattr_accessor :connection 173: cattr_accessor :table_name 177: cattr_accessor :session_id_column 181: cattr_accessor :data_column 282: cattr_accessor :session_class
actionpack/lib/action_controller/vendor/html-scanner/html/sanitizer.rb 44: cattr_accessor :included_tags, :instance_writer ⇒ false
actionpack/lib/action_view/base.rb 189: cattr_accessor :debug_rjs 193: cattr_accessor :warn_cache_misses
actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/active_record_helper.rb 7: cattr_accessor :field_error_proc
actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/form_helper.rb 805: cattr_accessor :default_form_builder
actionpack/lib/action_view/template_handlers/erb.rb 47: cattr_accessor :erb_trim_mode
actionpack/test/active_record_unit.rb 5: cattr_accessor :able_to_connect 6: cattr_accessor :connected
actionpack/test/controller/filters_test.rb 286: cattr_accessor :execution_log
actionpack/test/template/form_options_helper_test.rb 3:TZInfo::Timezone.cattr_reader :loaded_zones
activemodel/lib/active_model/errors.rb 28: cattr_accessor :default_error_messages
activemodel/Rakefile 19: rdoc.options << —line-numbers << —inline-source << -A cattr_accessor=object
activerecord/lib/active_record/attribute_methods.rb 9: base.cattr_accessor :attribute_types_cached_by_default, :instance_writer ⇒ false 11: base.cattr_accessor :time_zone_aware_attributes, :instance_writer ⇒ false
activeresource/lib/active_resource/base.rb 206: cattr_accessor :logger
activeresource/Rakefile 43: rdoc.options << —line-numbers << —inline-source << -A cattr_accessor=object
activesupport/lib/active_support/buffered_logger.rb 17: cattr_accessor :silencer
activesupport/lib/active_support/cache.rb 81: cattr_accessor :logger
activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/class/attribute_accessors.rb 5:# cattr_accessor :hair_colors 10: def cattr_reader(*syms) 29: def cattr_writer(*syms) 50: def cattr_accessor(*syms) 51: cattr_reader(*syms) 52: cattr_writer(*syms)
activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/logger.rb 34: cattr_accessor :silencer
activesupport/test/core_ext/class/attribute_accessor_test.rb 6: cattr_accessor :foo 7: cattr_accessor :bar, :instance_writer ⇒ false
activesupport/test/core_ext/module/synchronization_test.rb 6: @target.cattr_accessor :mutex, :instance_writer ⇒ false
railties/doc/guides/html/creating_plugins.html 786: cattr_accessor <span style="color: #990000">:</span>yaffle_text_field<span style="color: #990000">,</span> <span style="color: #990000">:</span>yaffle_date_field 860: cattr_accessor <span style="color: #990000">:</span>yaffle_text_field<span style="color: #990000">,</span> <span style="color: #990000">:</span>yaffle_date_field
railties/lib/rails_generator/base.rb 93: cattr_accessor :logger
railties/Rakefile 265: rdoc.options << —line-numbers << —inline-source << —accessor << cattr_accessor=object
railties/test/rails_info_controller_test.rb 12: cattr_accessor :local_request
Rakefile 32: rdoc.options << -A cattr_accessor=object
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need to look for def self. ?