Ensuring controller actions have necessary params

Rails
1

The usual CRUD controller actions assume that certain parameters were
sent. Let’s use a controller for books as an example:

BooksController < ApplicationController
def create
@book = Book.new params[:book]
# …etc…
end
end

So #create assumes that params[:book] exists. This is fine, because if
the “book” field wasn’t POSTed to #create, then params[:book] will
simply be nil, because ‘params’ is a Hash.

However, if our controller action tries to look at params[:book]
[:page_ids] when the “book” field wasn’t POSTed to #create, we’d get a
NoMethodError. This is because params[:book] is nil, which means that
params[:book][:page_ids] is equivalent to nil[:page_ids] , which will
obviously raise an error.

So the question is, do you bother to write additional checks for your
controller actions for these edge cases?

I would, because I like to be thorough and know that I’ve covered all
of my bases. But I can understand why people wouldn’t bother, because
said edge cases will probably only be generated by yourself during
testing, and by hooligans mucking with your forms.

What do you guys think?
-Nick

2

Hi –

On Sun, 30 Nov 2008, Nick H. wrote:

So the question is, do you bother to write additional checks for your
controller actions for these edge cases?

I would, because I like to be thorough and know that I’ve covered all
of my bases. But I can understand why people wouldn’t bother, because
said edge cases will probably only be generated by yourself during
testing, and by hooligans mucking with your forms.

What do you guys think?

One good way to think about it is: if you did have an extra check,
what would it do? In other words, if create gets executed and
params[:book] is nil, what would you want to happen? And, as a
follow-up, does your current error-reporting process already do what
you would want to have done in such a case?

David

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3

On 2008-11-30, at 16:31, David A. Black wrote:

Hi –

One good way to think about it is: if you did have an extra check,
what would it do? In other words, if create gets executed and
params[:book] is nil, what would you want to happen?

Hi David. I was thinking about what do in this situation, and reckon
that any of these is a good approach to take:

  1. Send a redirect to an appropriate page and return from the method;
  2. Render an appropriate page, and return from the method;
  3. Set params[:book] to an empty Hash;

And, as a
follow-up, does your current error-reporting process already do what
you would want to have done in such a case?

I haven’t setup error-reporting in the app yet, but it’s in my issue
tracker as another thing to do before releasing a beta!

Cheers,
Nick

4

On 2008-11-30, at 18:31, Frederick C. wrote:

  1. Send a redirect to an appropriate page and return from the method;

I want:

  • to know about it yourself (ie. David’s follow up)
  • it be obvious to the user that something bad happened (I.e don’t
    lull in them into a false sense of security by giving the impression
    the record was created fine whereas you actually just created it off
    the back of an empty Hash. You don’t need to display the full grungey
    error page, a ‘something bad happened page’ is fine usually

Fred

That’s a good point you raise, Fred. The third solution that I
proposed could cover up some bugs in your app that you’d want to
actually see. Also, as you said, there’s no need to fake rainbows and
unicorns for a user who submits bad data on purpose.
-Nick

5

On 30 Nov 2008, at 21:47, Nick H. wrote:

  1. Send a redirect to an appropriate page and return from the method;
  2. Render an appropriate page, and return from the method;
  3. Set params[:book] to an empty Hash;

My take on this: say you made a mistake somewhere, for example your
form is submitting a parameter with the wrong name (or the controller
was using the wrong parameter) and that it wasn’t caught by your tests
(after all your tests won’t be checking that the inputs you use in
your functional test are the same as those that would be produced by a
browser having rendered your form)

I want:

  • to know about it yourself (ie. David’s follow up)
  • it be obvious to the user that something bad happened (I.e don’t
    lull in them into a false sense of security by giving the impression
    the record was created fine whereas you actually just created it off
    the back of an empty Hash. You don’t need to display the full grungey
    error page, a ‘something bad happened page’ is fine usually

Fred