At my day job this week we released an account manager app that lets
people view/manage/pay their bills.
It’s a C# .net app, I designed the interface (css, html, js), 10 others
did the actual .net stuff (too many cooks that can’t boil water).
It went live, and bad things started to happen. Customer 1 could see
customer 2’s billing data, customer 2 would accidentally pay customer
3’s bill. It was all due to some “shared” variables getting overwritten
when customers would do the same action at relatively the same time.
My question is, is this something I should worry about with ROR/Ruby?
and or caching?
Thanks!
On 7/23/06, David C. [email protected] wrote:
when customers would do the same action at relatively the same time.
My question is, is this something I should worry about with ROR/Ruby?
and or caching?
Thanks!
If you’re sloppy, yes. Don’t be sloppy 
And really, this shouldn’t be an issue with C# either.
Daniel ----- wrote:
Hope this helps
That does, thanks a bunch!
Am half way through my first ROR app and
haven’t quite gotten to caching yet. Since I’m the only
one viewing the data at one time, just didn’t want to
have a problem when I get ready for prod.
And yes, I work with a group of hacks/drag-n-drop kings.
Gotta love the corporate world.
Thanks again.
On 7/24/06, David C. [email protected] wrote:
3’s bill. It was all due to some “shared” variables getting overwritten
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Yes. When you cache you should use fragment cache. Include in the cache
call a user id. the cache method accepts a hash like url for but it can
be
anything. You’re not restricted to real things (controllers/actions
etc).
If you don’t include somthing to seperate it by user, each user may get
the
same cached fragment.
an eg might be
<% cache( :controller => ‘bill’, :action => ‘show_last_10’, :user =>
current_user.id ) do -%>
<%= all your cached frag -%>
<% end %>
This will scope the fragment to those parameters, and you can re-use it
elsewhere if you want. Just include the same url in the cache.
Be sure to expire the fragment if the data changes. expire_fragment(
same_url_hash_used_in_cache_call )
Also the mean_time filter plugin is worth a look. with it you can put a
scope call around a whole controller or parts of it.
Hope this helps
Personally, I wouldn’t be caching anything until the app is done and
tested. Then if you actually need caching go back and put it in where
it’s really necessary, as determined by testing and benchmarking.
With payment/billing systems especially be a bit conservative. Every
additional feature you add is one more thing that can break in
unexpected ways due to software upgrades, code changes, etc… I also
freeze a copy of rails and all the gems that I use in the vendor
directory for apps like this. Ruby and rails is a fast moving target,
and there is no way you can keep up with all the changes to rails,
gems, plugins, etc…
Chris