Find objects in IRB directly from browser URLs

Posted by Dr Nic on January 01, 2008

A long time ago, I tired of going into the irb/console and finding objects/models using the traditional ActiveRecord command Person.find(15) and now I’m sitting pretty: I can paste in URLs to fetch objects.

# No more of this:
=> Person.find(15)
# instead:
=> people/15

people/15 is something you’ll copy+paste directly from your browser: http://localhost:3000/people/15

Of course, the url is based on your routing + controllers, so the assumption here is that your routes/controllers map to your active record models. That is, your app is smothered in RESTful love and cuddles.

Not following this? Here’s a video:

How to make this work at home

Copy and paste the following into your .irbrc file:

Thanks goes to…

The some original code for this comes via Mike Clark, who had the idea for syntax activity(6). This was good.

I previously had another idea to support the syntax 6.to_activity using the RubyGem to_activerecord. I still like the id.to_class_name structure of this and still use it.

But if I have a perfectly nice looking url sitting in front of me, I can now paste the class_name/id part into irb and I’m off and running.

Happy New Year.

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  1. PJ Tue, 01 Jan 2008 20:40:30 UTC

    I like it.

  2. mislav Wed, 02 Jan 2008 01:29:08 UTC

    I like it a lot.

    So how about nested routes? … Just kidding :) or am I?

  3. Dr Nic Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:27:53 UTC

    Ooh, I forgot the hook! You’ll need to add the following to the bottom of your .irbrc file:

    IRB.conf[:IRB_RC] = Proc.new { define_model_find_shortcuts }
  4. Dr Nic Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:46:32 UTC

    @mislav [via] - ok, figured out how to support has_many nested_routes, e.g. people/123/addresses

    See the pastie

    NOTE: This assumes there are models Person and Address, and Person.has_many :addresses

    Nifty.

  5. Matt Aimonetti Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:25:45 UTC

    @drnic Hey Gem master, what about packaging all of that in a nice gem a la wirble?

  6. saimon Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:22:01 UTC

    RE caboose chat:

    http://pastie.caboo.se/133959

    :)

  7. saimon Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:30:04 UTC

    You’ve now got no excuse to add in support for all restless urls (as far as logical) and package it up into a gem. DO IT NOW :)

  8. saimon Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:23:31 UTC

    http://pastie.caboo.se/133977

    This handles url of the type: /users/david

    Now only need to figure out /users/david-myopenid-com and we’re all set.

    :)

  9. Dr Nic Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:06:19 UTC

    @saimon [via] - Very nice work :)

    I added the following when clause to the #evaluate method to support development urls (e.g. http://localhost:3000...)

            when /^(http|https):\/\/[a-z.]+:[0-9]+(([0-9]{1,5})?\/.*)?$/ix
          original_evaluate($2.gsub(/(^\/)/,''), line_no)
  10. saimon Thu, 03 Jan 2008 10:53:42 UTC

    @Dr Nic [via] - Cool stuff…Looking good…

  11. Matthijs Langenberg Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:20:59 UTC

    While this is a neat little trick, I really don’t like the tight coupling between the way to access the resource at HTTP level and database level.

  12. Dr Nic Sat, 05 Jan 2008 10:53:16 UTC

    Matt Aimonetti noted that outside of script/console, there was an error with pluralize missing from String class. #pluralize is an active_scaffold contribution.

    I realise I have the following at the top of my .irbrc file:

    unless (IRB.conf[:LOAD_MODULES] || []).join =~ /config\/environment/
  require 'active_support'
end

    That is, if you’re in irb, and /config/environemtn isn’t loaded, then explicitly load active_support.

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