You can forward/reverse ports on Android device using adb

I'm developing an Android app as a side project and today I learned about adb forward and adb reverse. Basically, they allow you to forward or reverse traffic to specific ports between an Android device and your development machine.

Let's say I need my app to fetch something from http://localhost:3000/some-data. When the app is running on the phone localhost refers to the phone itself, and my server is running in my dev machine. So, if I do this:

adb reverse tcp:3000 tcp:3000

Now when the app tries to access localhost:3000 it will actually reach out to my dev machine's 3000 port. Very useful if you're developing the app's backend as well (as I am).

Similarly, if I wanted to access a server inside the phone from my dev machine, I could run:

adb forward tcp:5000 tcp:5000

And now if I run curl http://localhost:5000 in my dev machine it will hit the server running on the phone. Pretty neat!

How to run a single test from a file using Cypress

I can run all tests from a file with:

yarn run cypress:run -s path/to/file.spec.js

but what about when I want to run only one test case from that file and not all of them?

We could use only()

// path/to/file.spec.js

it.only('just run this test', () => { ... })

it('not run this test', () => { ... })

// we could also use describe.only() but IDK if that is a bug or a feature xD

Run again yarn run cypress:run -s path/to/file.spec.js to see how the it.only() test will run it

TIL about the attention economy

As a UX designer, the product you create will constantly compete for users’ attention. If users are paying attention to one thing, like a notification on their mobile phone, it means they’re ignoring something else, so users have to be selective about how they spend time! This battle over users’ attention is referred to as the attention economy.

The term attention economy originated with psychologist and Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon, who believed that there are limits on what humans can think about and do at one time. Many scientists believe that humans aren’t very good multitaskers; technology should help users, not distract them. The more distracted a person is, the less likely they are to complete a task well.

Set and preserve cookies on and Axios API call

I was using Axios to test an API created in Rails, trying to set up cookies for a User Authentication process. After attempting to get the information back i realize that the cookie was not persistent, due to the lack of one parameter... withCredentials: true So if you want your session to store cookies in the client side and have them available remember to pass it to the call import axios from import axios from 'axios' axios.post(API_SERVER + '/login', { email, password }, { withCredentials: true }) Otherwise the cookie would not be saved.

The Mehrabian rule

Today I learn the Mehrabian 7-38-55 rule. The rule states that: 7% of meaning is communicated through spoken word 38% through tone of voice, and 55 % through body language.

It was developed by psychology professor Albert Mehrabian at the University of California, Los Angeles.

So... it is always a good idea to keep our cameras on at every meeting ;)

Other errors when installing Capybara Webkit Gem - M1 Mac Big Sur

Well, it turns out that installing capybara-webkit gem can give you different problems, in my case I had to install

capybara-webkit -v '1.15.1'.

You need to install QT as a dependecy.

The latest versions of QT including 5.6 returns the following message:

QtWebKit is no longer included with Qt 5.6

I followed one of our guides here, however it appears that QT version 5.5 was removed.

cd $( brew --prefix )/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-core
git checkout 9ba3d6ef8891e5c15dbdc9333f857b13711d4e97 Formula/qt@5.5.rb
brew install qt@5.5

curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 404
Error: Failed to download resource "qt@5.5_bottle_manifest"
Download failed: https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/qt/5.5/manifests/5.5.1_1

I also tried through binary installer but I got the following error:

Error creating SSL context

I finally succeeded, installing an older version

brew tap cartr/qt4
brew install qt@4
brew install qt-webkit@2.3
gem install capybara-webkit -v '1.15.1'

Building native extensions. This could take a while...
Successfully installed capybara-webkit-1.15.1
1 gem installed

while on a Capybara / Cucumber test execution How to save and open the page as snapshot in a browser for inspection

While debugging a cucumber test (within an specific step for an specific scenario) with a binding.pry I wanted to see the html as it is with inputs and outputs of data at the moment (and because I usually run tests with Capybara headless option), I realized the existance of:

save_and_open_page

it Saves a snapshot of the page and open it in a browser for inspection

https://www.rubydoc.info/github/jnicklas/capybara/Capybara%2FSession:save_and_open_page

Note: ^ be sure to have the gem 'launchy' within test env so that it works

Fixing the Capybara Webkit Gem installation - QtWebKit is no longer included with Qt 5.6 error on M1 Mac with Big Sur

If you installed any version above 5.6 make sure you uninstall all those versions, for instance:

MacBook-Air:myproject heridev$ brew uninstall qt
Uninstalling /usr/local/Cellar/qt/6.0.3_2... (8,233 files, 158.7MB)
MacBook-Air:myproject heridev$ brew uninstall qt@5
Uninstalling /usr/local/Cellar/qt@5/5.15.2... (10,688 files, 367.9MB)

Then we need to install the 5.5 version (old version):

cd $( brew --prefix )/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-core
git checkout 9ba3d6ef8891e5c15dbdc9333f857b13711d4e97 Formula/qt@5.5.rb
// this will install the qt from shopify/shopify
brew install qt@5.5

And make sure you add the qt PATH in my case:

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/qt@5.5/bin:$PATH"' >> /Users/heridev/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

Now, you should be able to install the capybara webkit gem without any problems

User Stories

As a [UX Designer] I want to [embrace Agile] so that [I can make my projects user-centered]

TIL that User Stories were originated as part of the Agile and SCRUM development methodologies. A tool so simple yet so powerful, it is a great design method that enhances collaboration.

Read the entire article: https://bit.ly/3tkB3RE

Control email deliveries in Rails with a custom Interceptor

You can easily tell Rails to control email delivering with a custom mailer interceptor, all you need to do is to implement the class method delivering_email:

class DeliverOrNotEmailInterceptor
  def self.delivering_email(email)
    mail.perform_deliveries = !email.to.end_with?('special-domain.com')
  end
end

# config/initializer/email_interceptors.rb
ActionMailer::Base.register_interceptor(DeliverOrNotEmailInterceptor)

What is humans.txt?

I never heard of this until today.

What is humans.txt?

It's an initiative for knowing the people behind a website. It's a TXT file that contains information about the different people who have contributed to building the website.

Examples:

• Google
• MagmaLabs

Further reading

Safe access for nested key values in a Hash - dig method

If you are using Ruby 2.3.0 or above

Now instead of doing this:

result.try(:[], 'avatar').try(:[], 'model').try(:[], 'raw_attributes').try(:[], 'signup_state')
# or
result && result['avatar'] && result['avatar']['model'] && result['avatar']['model']['raw_attributes'] && result['avatar']['model']['raw_attributes']['signup_state']

Now you can easily do the same with dig:

result.dig('avatar', 'model', 'raw_attributes', 'signup_state')

How to add an image to a gist

1.- Create a gist

2.- Clone your gist:

# make sure to replace `<hash>` with your gist's hash
git clone https://gist.github.com/<hash>.git # with https
git clone git@gist.github.com:<hash>.git     # or with ssh

3.- Open it & move your image

cd <hash>
mv ~/Desktop/image.jpg ~/Projects/gist/image.jpg

4.- Add your image to your gist's repository:

git add image.jpg

5.- Commit the image:

git commit -m "Add image"

6.- Update gist:

git push origin master

How to understand the SQL behind an ActiveRecord Query

Quick example, to see and understand better how an ActiveRecord query using scopes or methods in the model works at the SQL level and how to run it, all in the same example

Ruby version

Let say you have a database with users and you have some scopes to filter by non-demo, active, and completed providers with a specific Role (CanCanCan behind the scenes) :

User.providers.real.active.completed

Let's look into the SQL version:

If we run this command

irb(main):007:0> User.providers.real.active.completed.to_sql

We would get this:

=> "SELECT \"users\".* FROM \"users\" INNER JOIN \"users_roles\" ON \"users_roles\".\"user_id\" = \"users\".\"id\" INNER JOIN \"roles\" ON \"roles\".\"id\" = \"users_roles\".\"role_id\" WHERE (roles.name = 'Provider') AND \"users\".\"demo_account\" = 'f' AND (\"users\".\"organization_id\" NOT IN (SELECT \"organizations\".\"id\" FROM \"organizations\" WHERE \"organizations\".\"demo_account\" = 't' ORDER BY \"organizations\".\"name\" ASC)) AND \"users\".\"is_active\" = 't' AND \"users\".\"signup_state\" = 'Completed'"

Then we just need to replace the invalid characters such as \ and translate that into a SQL version like this:

SUMMARY_PROVIDERS_REPORT_SQL = <<-SQL
WITH real_providers AS
  ( SELECT users.* FROM users
    INNER JOIN users_roles ON users_roles.user_id = users.id
    INNER JOIN roles ON roles.id = users_roles.role_id
    WHERE (roles.name = 'Provider') AND users.demo_account = 'f'
      AND (users.organization_id NOT IN (
        SELECT organizations.id FROM organizations WHERE organizations.demo_account = 't' ORDER BY organizations.name ASC)
      )
      AND users.is_active = 't' AND users.signup_state = 'Completed')
select real_providers.id, real_providers.name from real_providers
SQL

In order to run it in the Rails console for example:

report_results = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(SUMMARY_PROVIDERS_REPORT_SQL)
report_results.entries

That will give you the id and name of all those valid providers

How to check if an ActiveRecord association was already eager loaded

if you need to know whether to use a pre-laoded collection using eager loading or fech the collections, you can always call loaded? method:

if user.contact_phones.loaded?
  user.contact_phones.detect? {|phone| phone.primary }
else
  user.contact_phones.find_by(primary: true)
end