Ruby On Rails Interview Questions and Answers
Experienced / Expert level questions & answers
Ques 1. Explain a polymorphic association in Ruby on Rails.
Polymorphic associations allow a model to belong to more than one other model through a single association.
- Here, the class Picture belongs_to both Employee and Product, but does so through a single association rather than through multiple.
- Be sure to know an appropriate situation to create a polymorphic association, such as creating a comment model associated with multiple other models (articles, photos, etc.). The advantage of using polymorphism here is that it allows you to create a single comment model, rather than separate models for each one (PhotoComment model, ArticleComment model, etc.)
Ques 2. Explain what functional testing is in Ruby on Rails.
Functional testing in Rails allows you to test the response of various actions contained in a controller. Using the Rails default test library, mini test, functional tests use a collection of assert statements that will tell your testing library to expect a certain response based on a control request passed in (either a get, post, patch, put, head, delete request).
Ques 3. What is the purpose of YIELD in Ruby on Rails?
The interpreter essentially invokes a separate piece of code and places it in the location. You might say it is similar to a method calling another method. Let’s understand a little bit of background about where YIELD might be useful first.
The Rails framework encourages you to write code that is DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself).
Developers often write common code in a central file and then they write the custom code in the specific files. Let’s say you are building a web application and you want all pages to have a common header, a common footer, the same “Welcome user-name!” message.
You can put all this common code in your application.html.erb file.
<html> .... common page title
.. standard header...
<body>
..common page title,
<%= YIELD %>
..footer code can go here... </body>
</html>
The rest of the custom code can go in your specific file. Say the page you are creating is the list of articles. Then in your implementation file you would just write the code for pulling in the articles and the final page displayed to the user would be your custom code which will be placed instead of the <%= YIELD %>code in the application.html.erb file.
Ques 4. How can you dynamically define a method body in Ruby on Rails?
An instance method can be defined dynamically with
Module#define_method(name, body),
where name is the method’s name given as a Symbol, and body is its body given as a Proc, Method, UnboundMethod, or block literal. This allows methods to be defined at runtime, in contrast to def which requires the method name and body to appear literally in the source code.
class Conjure
def self.conjure(name, lamb)
define_method(name, lamb)
end
end
# Define a new instance method with a lambda as its body
Conjure.conjure(:glark, ->{ (3..5).to_a * 2 })
Conjure.new.glark #=> [3, 4, 5, 3, 4, 5]
Module#define_method is a private method so must be called from within the class the method is being defined on. Alternatively, it can be invoked inside class_eval like so:
Array.class_eval do
define_method(:second, ->{ self.[](1) })
end
[3, 4, 5].second #=> 4
Kernel#define_singleton_method is called with the same arguments as Module#define_method to define a singleton method on the receiver.
File.define_singleton_method(:match) do |file, pattern|
File.read(file).match(pattern)
end
File.match('/etc/passwd',/root/) #=> #<MatchData "root">Ques 5. What is Range?
Range is a great way to declare continuous variables. You should use it to declare arrays and other types of collections.
range1 = (1..4).to_a => [1, 2, 3, 4] puts range1 1 2 3 4
You can also create strings in this format and it fills in the interim values automatically.
range2 = ('bar'..'bat').to_a
puts range2
bar
bas
batrange2.each do |str|
puts "In Loop #{str}"
end
This produces the result as shown below:
In Loop bar In Loop bas In Loop bat
Ques 6. How can you implement method overloading in Ruby on Rails?
This one’s a tricky question. If you have a background in Java then you must know that method overloading is simply multiple methods with same name but different signatures/parameters.
In the case of Ruby method overloading is not supported.
However, it does support the overall goal of passing variable number of parameters to the same method. You would implement it like this:
class MyClass def initialize(*args) if args.size < 2 || args.size > 3 puts 'This method takes either 2 or 3 arguments' else if args.size == 2 puts 'Found two arguments' else puts 'Found three arguments' end end end end
The output can be seen here:
MyClass.new([10, 23], 4, 10) Found three arguments MyClass.new([10, 23], [14, 13]) Found two arguments
SO: You can get the same effect as method overloading but you just have to manage the number of variables inside your method itself.
Ques 7. How can you achieve the same as Multiple Inheritance using Ruby? What is Mixin?
Here’s an example:
module Debug
def whoAmI?
"I am #{self.to_s}"
end
end
class Photo
include Debug
end
ph = Photo.new
"I am : #<Photo:0x007f8ea218b270>"As you can see above the class Debug and it’s method “whoamI?” were mixed-in (added) with the class Photo.
That’s why you can now create an instance of the Photo class and call the whoAmI? method.
ph.whoAmI? => "I am : #<Phonograph:0x007f8ea218b270>"
Ques 8. How will you implement Single Pattern in Ruby on Rails?
Singleton means single instance.
So, the goal of a singleton pattern is to write a class definition but only allow the creation of the single instance of that object.
This can be achieved nicely with the singleton gem as shown below:
require 'singleton'
class Logger
include Singleton
def initialize
@log = File.open("logfile.txt", "a")
end
def log(msg)
@log.puts(msg)
end
end
Adding the singleton as a mixin to the
Logger.instance.log('This is just a test message')
The code above will create a single instance of Logger and simply put the message in the logger file.
Singleton patterns are mostly used for DB instance, Logger instance, etc. —- cases where there should be ONE and only ONE instance of the object that is used.
Sometimes you might like to actually hold on to the logger object and use it everywhere you can do so by the following command:
logObj = Logger.instance
Notice you cannot use the Logger.new to create an object instance because this is a singleton object and therefore calling ‘new’ would fail.
Ques 9. How will you implement Observer Pattern in Ruby on Rails?
Let’s review first what an observer pattern is all about.
The observer pattern (sometimes known as publish/subscribe) is a software design pattern in which an object, called the subject, maintains a list of its dependents, called observers, and notifies them automatically of any state changes, usually by calling one of their methods. It is mainly used to implement distributed event handling systems.
You might have used them in other programming languages as listener objects. You use them whenever a button is clicked on the screen and a method gets called automatically.
As in the case of the singleton pattern, the observer pattern is also implemented by mixing in a module.
In the Ruby implementation, the notifying class mixes in the Observable module, which provides the methods for managing the associated observer objects.
And, the observers must implement the update method to receive notifications.
Here’s an example. Say you want to send an SMS alert to users if a company stock drops then you can do something like this:
require "observer"
require "observer"
class Ticker # Periodically fetch a stock price
include Observable
attr_accessor :price
def initialize symbol, price
@symbol = symbol
@price = price
end
def run
lastPrice = nil
loop do
@price = @price+Random.rand(11)
print "Current price: #{price}n"
if @price != lastPrice
changed # notify observers
lastPrice = @price
notify_observers(Time.now, @price)
end
end
end
end
class Warner
def initialize ticker
ticker.add_observer(self) # all warners are observers
end
end
class SMSAlert < Warner
def update time, price # callback for observer
print "--- #{time.to_s}: SMS Alert for price: #{price}n"
end
end
class EmailAlert < Warner
def update time, price # callback for observer
print "+++ #{time.to_s}: Email Alert Price changed to #{price}n"
end
endQues 10. What is the purpose of Environment.RB and Application.RB in Ruby on Rails?
There are two files where variables and configuration settings are stored.
- config/environment.rb : Environment settings go here
- config/application.rb : Application level global settings go here
config.time_zone = 'Central Time (US & Canada)' config.i18n.default_locale = :de config.filter_parameters += [:password] # ensures that passwords are not logged
The same file is also used for configuring various environment settings such as:
config.action_mailer.smtp_settings # various email settings go here
What is the purpose of config/environments/development.rb file?
You would specify various config settings the development environment in this file.
config.action_controller.perform_caching = false # to enable caching
This is because you typically do not want to enable caching in the development environment.
The same config setting in the production environment would be equal to true.
Ques 11. How can you fire a method when a module is inside a class?
Fire a method inside a class is very simple.
Say you have a module file trig.rb:
module Trig PI = 3.141592654 def Trig.sin(x) # .. end def Trig.cos(x) # .. end end
Now you simply import this module inside your class and invoke the method using the “module.method_name” syntax as shown below
require "trig" class myclass y = Trig.sin(Trig::PI/4)
This type of invocation ensures that the right module method gets called.
Ques 12. How can you call the base class method from inside of its overridden method?
If you are inside the overridden method in the derived class then a simple call to super will call the right method in the base class
class Parent
def try_this()
puts "parent"
end
end
class Child < Parent
def try_this()
super()
puts "child"
end
end
ch = Child.new
ch.try_this()
This generates the output
parent child
Now if you just want to call the base class without calling the derived class then the best way to do that is to simply assign an alias to the parent method like this:
class Parent
def knox
puts 'parent'
end
end
class Child < Parent
alias_method :parent_knox, :knox
def knox
puts 'child'
end
end
ch = Child.new
ch.parent_knox
ch.knox
This allows you to call the base class method with the alias parent_knox and the derived class method knox can be called directly.
parent child
Ques 13. What is Scope in Ruby on Rails?
Scopes are nothing more than SQL scope fragments. By using these fragments one can cut down on having to write long queries each time you access content.
Say you typically access content as shown below:
@posts = Post.where("published_at IS NOT NULL AND posts.published_at <= "+ Time.now)Ruby offers you a nice way to put the where condition inside a scope statement as shown below.
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
scope :published, lambda {
{ :conditions =>
["posts.published_at IS NOT NULL AND posts.published_at <= ?", Time.now]
}
}
scope :recent, :order => "posts.published_at DESC"
endNow you can simply access the published posts as: Post.published
@posts = Post.published
Also, you can access recent posts as
@recent_posts = Post.recent
Ques 14. CAN YOU GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF A CLASS THAT SHOULD BE INSIDE THE LIB FOLDER?
Modules are often placed in the lib folder.
Ques 15. WHERE SHOULD YOU PUT CODE THAT IS SUPPOSED TO RUN WHEN YOUR APPLICATION LAUNCHES in Ruby on Rails?
In the rare event that your application needs to run some code before Rails itself is loaded, put it above the call to require ‘rails/all’ in config/application.rb.
Ques 16. What deployment tools do you use for Ruby on Rails?
Capistrano is a popular deployment tool.
Ques 17. What deployment tools do you use for Ruby on Rails?
Capistrano is a popular deployment tool.
Ques 18. How can you migrate your database schema one level down?
The rake tool does most of the migrations.
It has this nifty syntax to go back one step:
rake db:rollback
If you want to rollback all the way to the beginning you would use:
rake db:reset
This would drop the database, recreate the Database and load the current schema into it
If you want to rollback multiple steps at the same time you would use:
rake db:rollback STEP=3
To rollback all the way and if you are not worried about losing the data then you can drop the database completely with purge like this:
rake db:purge
Ques 19. What is Sweeper in Ruby on Rails?
Sometimes you want to have control over how often and when the cache expires.
Sometimes it is a good idea to have the system determine that on a logical basis. Say you have a list of product on your site and you want to reload the cache each time a new product is added/updated/deleted, then you can achieve this by using the sweeper.
class ProductSweeper < ActionController::Caching::Sweeper
OBSERVE PRODUCT# This sweeper is going to keep an eye on the Product model
# If our sweeper detects that a Product was created call this
def after_create(product)
expire_cache_for(product)
end
# If our sweeper detects that a Product was updated call this
def after_update(product)
expire_cache_for(product)
end
# If our sweeper detects that a Product was deleted call this
def after_destroy(product)
expire_cache_for(product)
end
private
def expire_cache_for(product)
# Expire the index page now that we added a new product
expire_page(:controller => 'products', :action => 'index')
# Expire a fragment
expire_fragment('all_available_products')
end
endQues 20. How can you implement Caching in Ruby on Rails?
Rails offers multiple ways to cache content.
Fragment caching is my favorite because it gives you the choice to fragment to pull a portion from the cache and the remaining from a real-time DB call.
Say you wanted to show all the orders placed on your website in real time and didn’t want to cache that part of the page, but did want to cache the part of the page which lists all products available, you could use this piece of code:
<% Order.find_recent.each do |o| %>
<%= o.buyer.name %> bought <%= o.product.name %>
<% end %>
<% CACHE DO %> All available products:
<% Product.all.each do |p| %>
<%= link_to p.name, product_url(p) %>
<% end %>
<% end %>Another technique that works well for static pages is page caching. This technique is often used for home pages and is super fast.
class ProductsController < ActionController
CACHES_PAGE:index
def index
@products = Products.all
end
endQues 21. What is Filter and when is it called in Ruby on Rails?
Filters are methods that are called either before/after a controller action is called.
Say a user requests a controller action such as userdashboard/index
In such a case a filter can be setup so that the UserDashboard/index page is only accessible to loggedin users by adding the following lines towards the beginning of the page:
class UserDashboardController < ApplicationController
before_filter :confirm_logged_in, :except => [:login, :attempt_login, :logout]
def index
....
end
def login
....
end
def attempt_login
....
end
def logout
....
end
end
In the code above the condition “confirm_logged_in” is checked before all actions, except login, logout & attempt_login.
After filters (after_filter) are not used too much but they have the effect of executing some code after a particular action has completed.
Think of them like triggers that get executed automatically — just like a database trigger.
Ques 22. What do Controllers task in Ruby on Rails?
Once a request comes into the Rails stack, it goes to the routes table to determine which controller and action should be called.
Once a controller action is determined the request is routed to the controller and it does the needed processing by connecting with the DB if needed and then it sends control to the View to render the output.
So, really the flow for Rails goes somewhat like this:
Customer-> Routes-> Controller -> Model(DB) -> Controller -> View -> Customer
Ques 23. What is RESTFUL routing in Ruby on Rails?
Routing is fun. If you have ever dealt with IIS you will fall in love with RESTful routing. Here’s how it works.
Say you want your users to have access to certain pages such as:
/photos/new
/photos/1/edit
/photos/1
And, you want the right controller to get called.
And, you want the right view to get rendered.
All this is made possible with a single entry in the routes.rb file.
In Rails, a resourceful route provides a mapping between HTTP verbs and URLs to controller actions. By convention, each action also maps to particular CRUD operations in a database. The single entry in the routing file creates seven different routes in your application, all mapping to the Photos controller:
GET-/photos
GET-/photos/new
POST - /photos
GET - /photos/:id
GET - /photos/:id/edit
PUT - /photos/:id
DELETE - /photos/:id
Ques 24. How can you routes all routs of an application?
rake routes -- will display all routes for an application.
Ques 25. How can you send a MULTI-PART Email?
Nowadays most email clients support HTML email, however there are still some old Blackberry phones that prefer emails the ‘ol text way.
Therefore it is important to send emails both as HTML and text. This technique is called multi-part emails.
The ActionMailer class (included in Rails 3.0) does a great job of sending both text and HTML emails out to the end user at the same time.
By default Rails sending an email with plain/text content_type, for example:
# app/models/notifier.rb def send_email(email) subject email.subject from email.from recipients email.recipients sent_on Time.now body :email => email end
Next let’s update the view in : app/views/notifier/send_email.html.erb
Welcome to here:
The sent email is a plain text email
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2010 16:38:07 +0800 From: RailsBP To: flyerhzm@gmail.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Welcome: http://rails-bestpractices.com
The link url is just displayed as a plain text because of the email content_type.
TEXT/HTML
If we want the email clients to display link url as html format, we should change the content_type to text/html in the app/models/notifier.rb file
def send_email(email) subject email.subject from email.from recipients email.recipients sent_on Time.now content_type "text/html" body :email => email end
Now the sent email is a html formatted email
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2010 17:32:27 +0800 From: RailsBP To: flyerhzm@gmail.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Welcome: http://rails-bestpractices.com
Now the email client can display the link url correctly with html format.
The email header looks somewhat like this:
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_002C_01BFABBF.4A7D6BA0" Content-Type: multipart/alternative tells the e-mail program to expect different parts to follow, separated by a boundary which specified in quotation marks. Actually the boundary could be anything, though hyphens, equal signs, and underscores insure that the e-mail program won't try to display this boundary to the recipient. ------=_NextPart_000_002C_01BFABBF.4A7D6BA0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Ques 26. What is the purpose of Layouts in Ruby on Rails?
Layouts are partial ruby/html files that are used to render the content pages.
There are placed in the folder: app/views/layouts
Items that you would typically put in this folder are things like headers/footers, navigation elements, etc.
Here’s a sample layout file: /app/views/layout/application.html.erb
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>Learning System | <%= @page_title || 'Admin Area' %></title>
<meta name="author" content="Anil Punjabi">
<%= stylesheet_link_tag('public', 'admin', :media => 'all') %>
<%= javascript_include_tag('application') %>
</head>
<body>
<div id="header">
<h1>Learning System</h1>
</div>
<div id="main">
<% if !flash[:notice].blank? %>
<div class="notice">
<%= flash[:notice] %>
</div>
<% end %>
<div id="content">
<%= yield %>
</div>
</div>
<div id="footer">
<p id="copyright">© / Anil Punjabi</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>Ques 27. IS IT POSSIBLE TO EMBED PARTIAL VIEWS INSIDE LAYOUTS? HOW?
That is the purpose of layouts. You embed partial views inside the file /app/views/layout/application.html.erb and then whenever you render any page this layout is merged with it.
Ques 28. What is Rake in Ruby on Rails?
Rake is a popular ruby gem that makes the job of running tasks simpler.
Rake is most often used for DB tasks, but it can be used for m
The common DB commands are:
rake db:migrate rake db:reset
You can use cron to schedule rake tasks.
Sometimes you would create a dataloader.rake file and put it in the lib/tasks folder so that it can be used to populate the database on startup.
Ques 29. What is Capistrano?
Capistrano is a popular deployment tool — it allows developers to push code from their desktop to the servers.
Ques 30. What is Eager Loading in Ruby on Rails?
Eager loading is a great optimization strategy to reduce the number of queries that are made against the DB.
Say you are finding 10 employees and then you are looking for their post codes. Then your query would appear something like this:
clients = Client.limit(10) clients.each do |client| puts client.address.postcode end
This may seem fine at first look but really this implementation leaves much to be desired. It makes 11 DB calls just to get the results.
Now you can optimize this query by making a slight change in the request like this:
clients = Client.includes(:address).limit(10) clients.each do |client| puts client.address.postcode end
This new request makes two SQL calls like this:
SELECT * FROM clients LIMIT 10 SELECT addresses.* FROM addresses WHERE (addresses.client_id IN (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10))
Ques 31. How does Validation works in Ruby on Rails?
Validation means checking to see if data is good before it is stored in the database.
During signups and other such user input cases you want to check and be sure that the data is validated. In the past developers would often put this type of validation logic as triggers in the database.
In an MVC architecture one can do validations at each level.
You can do validations in the controllers but it is usually a good idea to keep your controllers skinny.
Views suffer from the javascript limitation because javascript can be disabled on the client side so they are not completely reliable.
The best way to manage validation is to put it in the model code. This model code is really the closest as you can be to the database and works very well for Rails applications.
Here are a few validation examples:
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
validates :name, :length => { :minimum => 2 }
validates :points, :numericality => { :only_integer => true } # only integer
validates :age, :numericality => { :greater_than => 18 } # greater than 18
validates :email, :uniqueness => true
validates :email, :confirmation => true # this is to validate that the two email fields are identical
validates :email_confirmation, :presence => true # this is to validate that the email confirmation field is not nilIn your view template you may use something like this:
<%= text_field :person, :email %> <%= text_field :person, :email_confirmation %>
Ques 32. How can you add custom validation on your model in Ruby on Rails?
Now custom validations takes it to the next step.
Say you want to confirm that the data meets certain criteria
Ques 33. What is Flash in Ruby on Rails?
Flash is simply a way to pass some value to the next action.
Anything you place in the flash will be exposed to the very next action and then cleared out.
Here’s an example:
def destroy
section = Section.find(params[:id])
section.destroy
FLASH[:NOTICE] = "SECTION DESTROYED."
redirect_to(:action => 'list', :page_id => @page.id)
end
Then wherever you want to use the flash you can write this code. I often put this snippet in the application.html.erb file, somewhere towards the top:
<% if !flash[:notice].blank? %>
<div class="notice">
<%= flash[:notice] %>
Ques 34. HOW CAN YOU INSTALL THE MISSING GEMS THAT ARE REQUIRED BY YOUR APPLICATION IN THE SIMPLEST WAY in Ruby on Rails?
bundle install
Ques 35. How can you implement internationalization in Ruby on Rails?
Ruby ships with i18n which is an internationalization gem.
You need to create locale files and save them under the config/locales directory as:
en.yml
es.yml
fr.yml
The keys should match for each of these files.
en: main_page: hello: “Hello” welcome: “Welcome to My Company” es: main_page: hello: “Hola” welcome: “Bienvenido a Mi Empresa” fr: main_page: hello: “Salut” welcome: “Bienvenue Ă Mon Entrepriseâ€
ť In your code you would need to specify that the text would be locale specific. So change it to something like this:
.content %h1 = t("main_page.hello")
%p = t("main_page.welcome")Then you have to select the actual locale.
Ques 36. WHAT PLUGIN WOULD YOU RECOMMEND FOR USER AUTHENTICATION AND AUTHORIZATION?
Devise works great with Rails.
It supports OAuth authentication and therefore integrates nicely with Facebook.
Ques 37. WHAT PLUGIN DO YOU USE FOR FULL-TEXT SEARCH in Ruby on Rails?
Sunspot supports full-text search capability and uses Solr as the back-end search engine to do so.
You would include these two plugins in your gem file as shown below:
gem 'sunspot_rails' gem 'sunspot_solr'
Ques 38. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PLUGIN AND A GEM in Ruby on Rails?
A gem is just ruby code. It is installed on a machine and it’s available for all ruby applications running on that machine.
Rails, rake, json, rspec — are all examples of gems.
Plugin is also ruby code but it is installed in the application folder and only available for that specific application.
Sitemap-generator, etc.
In general, since Rails works well with gems you will find that you would be mostly integrating with gem files and not plugins in general. Most developers release their libraries as gems.
Ques 39. HOW CAN YOU IMPLEMENT A SEARCH FEATURE THAT SEARCHES FOR MULTIPLE MODELS in Ruby on Rails?
If you are using acts_as_solr for your search you will be able to use multi_solr_search to enable search across multiple models.
Also, you can configure Sunspot/Solr to support search across multiple models.
Sphinx, another powerful search server can be used to search across multiple models and it works great.
Ques 40. HOW CAN YOU UPLOAD A FILE TO A SERVER in Ruby on Rails?
Paperclip is the best solution to manage file uploads to a server.
It can also help you with multiple file uploads and associate it with ActiveRecord.
There are also good examples online that show how you can make rotating sliders with the paperclip images.
Another nice solution is using carrier_wave gem.
The nice thing about carrier_wave is that it has good documentation on how to integrate with S3, Google & Rackspace for file storage.
You can achieve the same file storage capability with Paperclip as well though.
Ques 41. HOW CAN YOU GENERATE SITEMAPS FOR YOUR RAILS SITE?
You can use dynamic_sitemaps gem to generate sitemaps.
Ques 42. HOW CAN YOU SHOW SEARCH USER FRIENDLY URLS INSTEAD OF USING ONLY NUMERIC IDS in Ruby on Rails?
The simplest way to do this is to use the gem FriendlyID.
It gives you the ability to specify a friendly URL for pages so that instead of the standard page URLs like:
You can build pages such as:
http://mysite.com/page/my-awesome-page-about-articles-and-content
Ques 43. HOW CAN YOU CREATE PAGE TITLES AND METADATA FOR YOUR PAGES in Ruby on Rails?
You can use the Headliner plugin for adding page titles.
You can use the MetaMagic plugin to add meta tags.
Ques 44. HOW CAN YOU CREATE BREADCRUMBS ON YOUR PAGES in Ruby on Rails?
Gretel is a great plugin to introduce breadcrumbs in your Rails application.
Another very simple implementation is breadcrumb_on_rails.
Ques 45. Is Rails Scalable?
Yes Rails gives you complete freedom to use all traditional means of scaling an application. Things like memcached, caching full pages, caching fragments are all supported.
You can use any standard CDN to serve your media and static content as well.
Database scaling using sharding is supported.
Finally heroku makes your life easier by giving you the flexibility to scale up/down based on your need. Mostly websites have a peak time during which you need more servers and then there is a sleep time. Heroku makes that on-demand scaling process simpler. Companies such as HireFireApp.com makes the autoscale process easier.
Ques 46. What are the key deployment challenges in Ruby on Rails?
heroku makes deployment easy.
Things that I sometimes run into are:
> Mismatched gem versions between local and production environment
> Some lessons learned:
»» Use image_tag helper each time
»» Specify root path in ENV variable
»» Configure assets pipeline by setting: config.assets.enabled = true in the config/application.rb file
Configure Capistrano script to precompile assets
Ques 47. HOW CAN YOU SAFEGUARD A RAILS APPLICATION FROM SQL INJECTION ATTACK?
Rails already has the logic built into it to prevent SQL injection attacks if you follow the right syntax.
Say you are trying to authenticate a user based on their login and password you might be tempted to use a syntax as below:
User.first("login = '#{params[:name]}' AND password = '#{params[:password]}'")If an attacker enters ’ OR ‘1’=‘1 as the name, and ’ OR ’2’>’1 as the password, the resulting SQL query will be:
SELECT * FROM users WHERE login = '' OR '1'='1' AND password = '' OR '2'>'1' LIMIT 1
This will simply find the first record in the database, and grants access to this user.
To prevent this type of SQL injection simply use the following format.
User.where("login = ? AND password = ?", entered_user_name, entered_password).firstOR
User.where(:login => entered_user_name, :password => entered_password).first
Ques 48. How can you secure a Rails Application?
Rails has a lot of in-built capabilities to deal with common web-security issues.
> SQL Injection
> Cross-Site
> Session fixation and Session hijacking
> Captcha
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