Rails Footnotes

If you are developing in Rails you should know the plugin! It displays footnotes in your application for easy debugging, such as sessions, request parameters, cookies, filter chain, routes, queries, etc.

Even more, it contains links to open files directly in your editor including your backtrace lines.

Installation

NOTE: Since this branch aims Rails 3 support, if you want to use it with Rails 2.3 you should check this branch:

https://github.com/josevalim/rails-footnotes/tree/rails2

Install Rails Footnotes is very easy.

Rails 3.x

gem 'rails-footnotes', '>= 3.7.5.rc4', :group => :development

After you install RailsFootnotes and add it to your Gemfile, you need to run the generator:

rails generate rails_footnotes:install

Rails 2.x

In RAILS_ROOT/config/environments/development.rb (yes, you want it only in development):

gem "rails-footnotes", '< 3.7.0', :group => :development

Configuration

For version greater than 3.7.0

If you want to add alternate logic to enable or disable footnotes, add something like this to config/initializers/footnotes.rb:

if defined?(Footnotes) && Rails.env.development?
  Footnotes.run! # first of all

  # ... other init code
end

Post initialization

If you want to add alternate logic to config footnotes without commit it to SCM, add your code to .footnotes:

Footnotes::Filter.notes = []

this code temporarily disables notes for all controllers

Hooks

Footnotes.setup do |config|
  config.before {|controller, filter| filter.notes = controller.class.name =~ /Message/ && \
    controller.action_name == 'index' ? [:assigns] : []}
  config.before {|controller, filter| filter.notes |= [:params] if controller.class.name =~ /Profile/ && \
    controller.action_name == 'edit' }
end

If you are not using Textmate as text editor, MacVim and Sublime Text 2 are also compatible.

MacVim

In your environment.rb or in an initializer do:

Footnotes::Filter.prefix = 'mvim://open?url=file://%s&line=%d&column=%d'

Where you are going to choose a prefix compatible with your text editor. The %s is replaced by the name of the file, the first %d is replaced by the line number and the second %d is replaced by the column.

Take note that the order in which the file name (%s), line number (%d) and column number (%d) appears is important. We assume that they appear in that order. “foo://line=%d&file=%s” (%d precedes %s) would throw out an error.

Sublime Text 2

Keep the Textmate prefix, Footnotes::Filter.prefix = ‘txmt://open?url=file://%s&line=%d&column=%d’
Install subl-hanlder
Open subl-handler. Go to preferences (SublHandler > Preferences), and point “Path to subl” to your installed instance. (EG, /Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl). Note: do not escape the whitespaces, subl-handler accounts for those.
Install RCDefault. It’s OSX 10.2, but it works.
Go to RCDefaultApp (OS System Preferences > DefaultApps). Go to URL section, select “tmxt” extension, and set default applicaiton to “SublHandler”.

Footnotes Display Options

By default, footnotes are appended at the end of the page with default stylesheet. If you want to change their position, you can define a div with id “footnotes_holder” or define your own stylesheet by turning footnotes stylesheet off:

Footnotes::Filter.no_style = true

Another option is to allow multiple notes to be opened at the same time:

Footnotes::Filter.multiple_notes = true

Finally, you can control which notes you want to show. The default are:

Footnotes::Filter.notes = [:session, :cookies, :params, :filters, :routes, :env, :queries, :log, :general]

Creating your own notes

Create your notes to integrate with Footnotes is easy.

Create a Footnotes::Notes::YourExampleNote class
Implement the necessary methods (check abstract_note.rb file in lib/notes)
Append your example note in Footnotes::Filter.notes array (usually at the end of your environment file or in an initializer):

For example, to create a note that shows info about the user logged in your application you just have to do:

module Footnotes
  module Notes
    class CurrentUserNote < AbstractNote
      # This method always receives a controller
      #
      def initialize(controller)
        @current_user = controller.instance_variable_get("@current_user")
      end

      # Returns the title that represents this note.
      #
      def title
        "Current user: #{@current_user.name}"
      end

      # This Note is only valid if we actually found an user
      # If it's not valid, it won't be displayed
      #
      def valid?
        @current_user
      end

      # The fieldset content
      #
      def content
        escape(@current_user.inspect)
      end
    end
  end
end

Then put in your environment:

Footnotes::Filter.notes += [:current_user]

Display of the notes

By default the notes will be showed at the bottom of your page (appended just before </body>). If you’d like these notes on a different place (perhaps for aesthetical reasons) you can edit one of your views and add:

<div id="footnotes_holder"></div>

at an appropriate place, your notes will now appear inside div#footnotes_holder

Collaborators

Leon Li - github.com/scorpio
Keenan Brock - github.com/kbrock
Ivan Storck - github.com/ivanoats
Kris Chamber - github.com/kristopher

Bugs and Feedback

If you discover any bugs, please send an e-mail to [email protected] If you just want to give some positive feedback or drop a line, that’s fine too!

Version 3.x

This plugin was maintained until version 3.6 by José Valim

Version 2.0

This plugin was created and maintained until version 2.0 by Duane Johnson: