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Chris Kottom's Tech and Business Blog

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Latest posts

Solid Service Objects with Interactor

Most non-trivial Rails applications eventually outgrow the basic MVC pattern. You start with simple controller actions and model methods, but as your business logic gets more complex, you need somewhere to put all that code. The choice between fat...

Minitest Assertions with Spec-Style Blocks

I just recently started using Minitest again on some greenfield projects after spending several years working primarily in RSpec. Having been over to the other side, I can say there was certainly a mix of things I liked and things I didn’t, but without...

Working in Public Update - September 5, 2022

What I’ve been working on I spent a lot of time last week investing in areas that I think will help me go faster as I build out HuddleUp over the next weeks and months, so even though I didn’t cross as many items off the to-do list as I would have...

Working in Public Update - August 29, 2022

I spent the past two weeks in Italy enjoying the sights and sounds and, let’s be honest here, tastes that the country has to offer. We’ve been taking our family there for the past 13 years - same town, same apartment, same everything - and it’s always been a great source of inspiration as well as a place to catch our breath before the start of school and the final push through the end of the year.

Comparing Timestamps in Rails

It’s not old, it’s vintage. This post was last updated some years ago and hasn’t been updated recently. Be aware that some of the content, tools, and techniques described may not be completely up-to-date. The Ruby core language and standard library include two classes that represent timestamps: Time and DateTime . And even though they fill similar needs, they have different internals and aren’t…

Rails Helper Testing Made Simple

It’s not old, it’s vintage. This post was last updated some years ago and hasn’t been updated recently. Be aware that some of the content, tools, and techniques described may not be completely up-to-date. Rails relies on a standard project structure and a strong set of conventions to keep things neat and tidy - models separated from controllers, configuration in another folder structured just so.…

Full-Stack Testing with Rails System Tests

It’s not old, it’s vintage. This post was last updated some years ago and hasn’t been updated recently. Be aware that some of the content, tools, and techniques described may not be completely up-to-date. Ruby on Rails’ bundled support for automated testing has contributed to building a culture of testing within the community, but it’s also been a source of some debate. Differences in testing…

Versioning a Rails API

It’s not old, it’s vintage. This post was last updated some years ago and hasn’t been updated recently. Be aware that some of the content, tools, and techniques described may not be completely up-to-date. When I finally manage to master an API or framework by CommitStrip.com API versioning is one of those topics that divides developers into two camps: those who just know that their way is the best…

Minitest Cheat Sheet

It’s not old, it’s vintage. This post was last updated some years ago and hasn’t been updated recently. Be aware that some of the content, tools, and techniques described may not be completely up-to-date. Recently I came across a post that called out a perceived lack of documentation and learning materials for Minitest in contrast with RSpec. And while I’m not entirely sure I agree with the…

Testing Rails Background Workers

It’s not old, it’s vintage. This post was last updated some years ago and hasn’t been updated recently. Be aware that some of the content, tools, and techniques described may not be completely up-to-date. When it was released in Rails 4.2 , Active Job was an important addition to the platform. Background jobs have been a part of the ecosystem for a long time, but this was the first time that…

Bulletproof Rails Background Jobs

It’s not old, it’s vintage. This post was last updated some years ago and hasn’t been updated recently. Be aware that some of the content, tools, and techniques described may not be completely up-to-date. The ability to run operations with long or uncertain execution times in the background has become a standard tool for modern web applications, and most frameworks and platforms now include some…