Rails Console Magic Tricks
Tags: rubyrailsrubyonrails
Published: 2018-08-26 16:59:41

---
title: Rails Console Magic Tricks
published: true
description: A few techniques to increase the developer experience during a Rails Console session
tags: ruby rails rubyonrails
---

# Rails Console Magic Tricks

A few techniques to increase the developer experience during a Rails Console session. Please note that some of them will come from Ruby itself, and thus won’t be necessarily restricted to the console.

## Rolling back after the end of a session

It is possible to run the console in a mode called sandbox. In that mode, every change made to the database will be automatically rolled back when the session terminates:

```
$ rails console --sandbox
```

## Retrieving the previous execution value

The result of the immediately previous console execution can be retrieved and, as the example suggests, assigned to a local variable by calling the_:

```
>> Game.all.map(&:name)
=> ["zelda", "mario", "gta"]
>> names = _
=> ["zelda", "mario", "gta"]
```

## Searching for methods with grep

It is possible to find out the complete name of a method having only a part of it. By calling grep from Arrayone can execute a handy search over the methods of a given object:

```
>> Game.first.methods.grep(/lumn/)
Game Load (0.8ms)  SELECT  "games".* FROM "games" ORDER BY "games"."id" ASC LIMIT $1  [["LIMIT", 1]]
=> [:column_for_attribute, :update_column, :update_columns]
``` 

## Finding out a method location

The source_location method from the Object class returns the full path of a method's file definition, including the line where it was defined. It can be specially useful when exploring third party libraries:

```
>> 'Luis Vasconcellos'.method(:inquiry).source_location
=> ["/usr/local/bundle/gems/activesupport-5.2.1/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/inquiry.rb", 12]
```

## Returning the source code of a method

While it is interesting to know the exactly location of a method, there are cases where might be even better to output its source code directly to the console. This can be achieved by using the source method:

```
>> 'Luis Vasconcellos'.method(:inquiry).source.display
def inquiry
    ActiveSupport::StringInquirer.new(self)
  end
=> nil
```

## The helper object

The console provides an object called helper, which can be used to directly access any view helper from a Rails application:

```
>> helper.truncate('Luis Vasconcellos', length: 9)
=> "Luis V..."
```

## The app object

The console also provides an interesting object called app, which is basically an instance of your application. It is possible with this object to achieve such things as:

- Access to `GET` endpoints

```
>> app.get('/')
Started GET "/" for 127.0.0.1 at 2018-08-25 22:46:52 +0000
   (0.5ms)  SELECT "schema_migrations"."version" FROM "schema_migrations" ORDER BY "schema_migrations"."version" ASC
Processing by HomeController#show as HTML
  Rendering home/show.html.erb within layouts/application
  Rendered home/show.html.erb within layouts/application (11417.2ms)
  Rendered shared/_menu.html.erb (3.6ms)
  Rendered shared/header/_autocomplete.html.erb (292.2ms)
  Rendered shared/_header.html.erb (312.9ms)
  Rendered shared/_footer.html.erb (3.7ms)
Completed 200 OK in 11957ms (Views: 11945.5ms | ActiveRecord: 0.0ms)
=> 200
```

- Access to `POST` endpoints

```
>> app.post('/games/zelda/wishlist_placements.js')
Started POST "/games/zelda/wishlist_placements.js" for 127.0.0.1 at 2018-08-25 23:03:21 +0000
Processing by OwnlistPlacementsController#create as JS
  Parameters: {"game_slug"=>"zelda"}
  Game Load (0.6ms)  SELECT  "games".* FROM "games" WHERE "games"."slug" = $1 LIMIT $2  [["slug", "zelda"], ["LIMIT", 1]]
  Rendering wishlist_placements/create.js.erb
  Rendered wishlist_placements/create.js.erb (194.8ms)
Completed 200 OK in 261ms (Views: 252.9ms | ActiveRecord: 0.6ms)
=> 200
```

- Search for a `_path` helper from a `Game` route:

```
>> app.methods.grep(/_path/).grep(/game/)
=> [:search_games_path, :game_ownlist_placements_path, :game_ownlist_placement_path, :game_wishlist_placements_path, :game_wishlist_placement_path, :game_path]
```

- Combining the previous tricks in a more useful way:

```
>> app.get(app.root_path)
Started GET "/" for 127.0.0.1 at 2018-08-26 02:27:40 +0000
Processing by HomeController#show as HTML
  Rendering home/show.html.erb within layouts/application
  Rendered home/show.html.erb within layouts/application (12550.2ms)
  Rendered shared/_menu.html.erb (3.8ms)
  Rendered shared/header/_autocomplete.html.erb (1.2ms)
  Rendered shared/_header.html.erb (28.0ms)
  Rendered shared/_footer.html.erb (3.8ms)
Completed 200 OK in 12835ms (Views: 12810.0ms | ActiveRecord: 0.0ms)
=> 200
```

```
>> app.body.response
=> "\n<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n  <head>\n    <title> ...
```

```
>> app.cookies
=> #<Rack::Test::CookieJar:0x0000556ee95c33e0 @default_host="www.example.com", @cookies=[#<Rack::Test::Cookie:0x0000556eeb72b2d0 @default_host="www.example.com", ...
```