[Rails3] Conditional before_filter not always executed for implicit resource actions

It must be noted that this specifically wasn't working for the production environment, I couldn't reproduce this error either in development mode on my machine (ruby 1.8.7 (2010-04-19 patchlevel 253) [i686-darwin10.4.0], MBARI 0x6770, Ruby Enterprise Edition 2010.02).

Will do.

I'd suggest doing a grep or an ack for skip_before_filter. Just the first thing that came to my mind.

I am experiencing the same issue where the before_filter is not always being executed. This is occurring in my dev environment. I thought I was going crazy.
I am using

Ruby 1.9.2 P0 (Windows 7 x64)
Rails 3.0.0

I use the following

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
before_filter :set_path_info

  def set_path_info
    session['Path Info'] = request.path_info
  end
end

That's really strange, as that is just the usual construct. I'll try to reproduce the bug today and find out what's going wrong. @Joey, what app server are you using on your dev machine? Mongrel?

So far no clue as I can't reproduce the bug locally (production env). The only difference is that the deployment server is running passenger while I'm using webrick, so it might be a passenger bug. If Joey doesn't find anything either, it's fine with me to mark this ticket invalid.

I am using WEBrick 1.3.1. . I am not able to reproduce the error today after I restarted my machine. If I get the error again, I will try to better document the steps to reproduce it.

Automatic cleanup of spam.

ps: sorry for the bad formatting - here my workaround for passenger again:

before_filter :load_organizer def load_organizer
  @organizer = Organizer.find_by_code(session[:contr])
end

before_filter :load_event #, :only => [:details, :reservation, :places] def load_event
  @event = @organizer.events.find(params['id']) if params['id']
end

before_filter :load_rank #, :only => [:places] def load_rank
  @rank = @event.hall.ranks.find(params['rank']) if params['rank']
end

...

before_filter :load_organizer
def load_organizer
  @organizer = Organizer.find_by_code(session[:contr])
end

before_filter :load_event #, :only => [:details, :reservation, :places]
def load_event
  @event = @organizer.events.find(params['id']) if params['id']
end

before_filter :load_rank #, :only => [:places]
def load_rank
  @rank = @event.hall.ranks.find(params['rank']) if params['rank']
end

I managed to reproduce this problem in a rails application with a cucumber test (capybara). As this is closed source, I'm currently stripping it down to something I can upload to github. Hopefully it will help us find out what's causing this.

does this really interest nobody? where do you all host your rails apps? still on mongrel clusters with a proxy???? or does nobody really use rails for production sites? ;-)

I uploaded the application with the failing cucumber feature to github: http://github.com/moiristo/before_filter_bug.

It does not reproduce the exact same issue described in this ticket, as the application shows that before_filters are called while they should not be called. However, I do think that both issues are closely related.

Please try to run the cucumber feature and let me know if you're experiencing the same problem. Here is the output I get:

$ cucumber features
Using the default profile...
WARNING: No DRb server is running. Running features locally:
......"find_account_detail before_filter called for action: edit. Allowed actions: [:edit, :update, :delete, :destroy]."
.."find_account_detail before_filter called for action: update. Allowed actions: [:edit, :update, :delete, :destroy]."
......"[!BUG!] find_account_detail before_filter called for action: new. Allowed actions: [:edit, :update, :delete, :destroy]."
F------..."[!BUG!] find_account_detail before_filter called for action: new. Allowed actions: [:edit, :update, :delete, :destroy]."
F------..."[!BUG!] find_account_detail before_filter called for action: new. Allowed actions: [:edit, :update, :delete, :destroy]."
F------...."find_account_detail before_filter called for action: edit. Allowed actions: [:edit, :update, :delete, :destroy]."
.."find_account_detail before_filter called for action: update. Allowed actions: [:edit, :update, :delete, :destroy]."
...

(::) failed steps (::)

Couldn't find AccountDetail without an ID (ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound)
./app/controllers/account_details_controller.rb:58:in `find_account_detail'
./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:35
./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:14:in `with_scope'
./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:34:in `/^(?:|I )follow "([^"]*)"(?: within "([^"]*)")?$/'
features/account_management.feature:24:in `And I follow "Telefoonnummer toevoegen"'

Couldn't find AccountDetail without an ID (ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound)
./app/controllers/account_details_controller.rb:58:in `find_account_detail'
./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:35
./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:14:in `with_scope'
./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:34:in `/^(?:|I )follow "([^"]*)"(?: within "([^"]*)")?$/'
features/account_management.feature:34:in `And I follow "E-mail adres toevoegen"'

Couldn't find AccountDetail without an ID (ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound)
./app/controllers/account_details_controller.rb:58:in `find_account_detail'
./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:35
./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:14:in `with_scope'
./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:34:in `/^(?:|I )follow "([^"]*)"(?: within "([^"]*)")?$/'
features/account_management.feature:44:in `And I follow "Website toevoegen"'

Failing Scenarios:
cucumber features/account_management.feature:22 # Scenario: Creating phone numbers
cucumber features/account_management.feature:32 # Scenario: Creating email addresses
cucumber features/account_management.feature:42 # Scenario: Creating websites

5 scenarios (3 failed, 2 passed)
48 steps (3 failed, 18 skipped, 27 passed)
0m2.769s

Again, here is my setup if it's important:

  system:
    uname:       "Darwin Marvin.local 10.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.4.0: Fri Apr 23 18:28:53 PDT 2010; root:xnu-1504.7.4~1/RELEASE_I386 i386"
    bash:        "/bin/bash => GNU bash, version 3.2.48(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin10.0)"
    zsh:         "/bin/zsh => zsh 4.3.9 (i386-apple-darwin10.0)"

  rvm:
    version:      "rvm 1.0.6 by Wayne E. Seguin (wayneeseguin@gmail.com) [http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/]"

  ruby:
    interpreter:  "ruby"
    version:      "1.8.7"
    date:         "2010-04-19"
    platform:     "i686-darwin10.4.0"
    patchlevel:   "2010-04-19 patchlevel 253"
    full_version: "ruby 1.8.7 (2010-04-19 patchlevel 253) [i686-darwin10.4.0], MBARI 0x6770, Ruby Enterprise Edition 2010.02"

the same in 3.0.1 with all gems up2date

in the controller:

  before_filter :load_event, :only => [:details, :reservation, :places]
  def load_event

@event = @organizer.events.find(params['id'])

  end

and the error (had to replace some parts with ****):

Started GET "/****/places?rank=2&id=1" for ****** at Sun Oct 17 16:04:04 +0200 2010
  Processing by ******#places as HTML
  Parameters: {"id"=>"1", "rank"=>"2"}
Rendered places/_places.html.erb (122.5ms)
Rendered ****/places.html.erb within layouts/***** (124.7ms)
Completed   in 129ms

ActionView::Template::Error (undefined method `name' for nil:NilClass):
    1: <div id="places">
    2:   <h2>Platzwahl<span> | <%=h @event.name %> | <%=h @rank.name %></span></h2>
...

so the event isn't executed.

with the following ugly version its working:

  before_filter :load_event
    @event = @organizer.events.find(params['id']) if params['id']
  end

this only happens deployed on passenger with tested versions: last stable, 3.0 pre-release. i hope someone can fix this asap, because that's a really ugly bug if you want to deploy your app, that was all fine in mongrel, and doesn't work at all in passenger...

really interesting format here btw ;-)

I have duplicated this bug in Rails 3.0.1:

• Webrick 1.3.1 on ruby 1.9.2 (2010-08-18) [i386-darwin9.8.0]
• Heroku stack bamboo-mri-1.9.2
• config.cache_classes must be TRUE. This issue comes up in both development and production, but only if classes are cached.

And the other way around, if I set my Heroku environment to development, the issue goes away. So class caching has something to do with it.

A simple def show; end also cures the problem. Only implicit actions misbehave.

Just wanted to confirm that I experienced both bugs mentioned in this thread:
1) before_filter does not always execute
2) before_filters executed despite restrictions

Some of my setup:
Rails 3.0.1
WEBrick 1.3.1
Ruby Enterprise Edition 1.8.7 2010.02
Both locally and on Heroku Bamboo REE 1.8.7

Only discovered this in production, however turning off class caching seems to solve both problems.

With class caching on, explicitly defining the action seems to solve the first problem of having the before filter execute; however, I still had filters that were executing despite conditional options restricting that. Furthermore, I found the latter problem happened intermittently.

I'd like to correct myself: it seems explicitly defining the actions seems to solve both problems.

I have duplicated this bug in Rails 3.0.3 with ruby 1.9.2 and unicorn 1.1.4 (and 3.1.0) ONLY for PRODUCTION environment

before_filter performed for actions without real definition.

Without action method definition rails throws exception. My current fix for this problem!

class Mobile::CampaignsController < ApplicationController

  before_filter :load_mobile_camapign, :except => [ :index, :new, :create, :ids_with_images ]
  
  # Fix unknown rails issue
  # A ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound occurred in campaigns#new:
  # Couldn't find Campaign without an ID
  # activerecord (3.0.3) lib/active_record/relation/finder_methods.rb:279:in `find_with_ids'
  def new; end


  private
  
  def load_mobile_camapign
    @campaign = current_account.mobile_campaigns.find params[:id]
  end

end

Yet another controller

class Admin::UsersController < Admin::BaseController
  
  before_filter :load_account_user, :except => [ :index, :new, :create ]
  
  respond_to :html

  # A ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound occurred in users#new:
  # Couldn't find User without an ID
  # activerecord (3.0.3) lib/active_record/relation/finder_methods.rb:279:in `find_with_ids'
  def new; end


  private

  def load_account_user
    @user = @account.users.find params[:id]
  end

end

Should this ticket still have low priority? IMO, the bug has been confirmed and I think it is not a minor bug. I understand a patch would be nice, but I have not been able to pinpoint what causes this issue.

FWIW, we are experiencing exactly the same issue... our setup is as follows:

• rails 3.0.3
• passenger 3.0.0
• ruby 1.8.7 (2010-08-16 patchlevel 302) [x86_64-linux]

As noted above, in our case this is a intermittent issue as well, and cannot be easily reproduced.

Reinier de Lange wrote:

It must be noted that this specifically wasn't working for the production environment, I couldn't reproduce this error either in development mode on my machine

Same here...

Reinier de Lange wrote:

Should this ticket still have low priority? IMO, the bug has been confirmed and I think it is not a minor bug.

+1, especially as the workarounds are butt-ugly :P

For me the filters run just fine on development (with both :except and :only). However in tests the filters is always run regardless of the options.

Here's a patch with a failing test for the problem described above. I assume the problem has something to do with the "action_name == 'action'" filter in the callback and action_name not being set for implicitly defined actions.

Workaround; the solution appears to be to define an empty method for now.

I've seen exactly the same behaviour in Rails 3.0.4

I should add that in my case, a filter (which was defined as :only occurring for some set of actions) was being fired for an implicit resource action that was not in that set.

(from [9772de8d459960cc114c5b214343b7ce08fea21c]) Fix filter :only and :except with implicit actions

The method_name argument is "default_render" for implicit actions
so use the action_name attribute to determine which callbacks to run.

[#5673 [Rails3] Conditional before_filter not always executed for implicit resource ... state:resolved] https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/9772de8d459960cc114c5b214343b...

The reason it was working in development is the class reloading results in the filter chain being rebuilt on every request. It was also dependent on the order of requests to the controller whether the filter would run or not.