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Sinatra: Frequently Asked Questions
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Frequently Asked Questions

  • this will become the toc {:toc}

What happened to reloading in Sinatra 0.9.2? {#reloading}

Source file reloading was removed in the 0.9.2 due to excess complexity.

For reloading Sinatra you can use shotgun, Rack::Reloader, or Sinatra::Reloader.

Shotgun is the cleanest, but slowest of all options, as it forks a new ruby process loading your code for every request. That way you got no conflicts between old and new code. As it uses fork, it does work neither on JRuby nor on Windows.

Install shotgun via gem and run your app as follows, if your application is the default, "classic" style application (as shown eg. in README):

$ sudo gem install shotgun
$ shotgun myapp.rb

When your application is a "modular" application (where you define your own class and inherit eg. from Sinatra::Base), you have to create a config.ru file for your application:

$ cat config.ru
require 'app'
run App

and then point shotgun to the config ru file:

$ shotgun config.ru -p 4567

Rack::Reloader is a Rack middleware that reloads all files on every request. This normally does not play well with Sinatra, due to its internals.

Sinatra::Reloader is a Sinatra extension. It reloads only files that have changed and automatically detects orphaned routes that have to be removed. Most other implementations delete all routes and reload all code if one file changed, which takes way more time than reloading only one file, especially in larger projects. Files defining routes will be added to the reload list per default. You can add and remove files to the reload list at runtime. For more information, see its README.

What are my deployment options? {#deploy}

See the book.

How do I use sessions? {#sessions}

Sessions are disabled by default. You need to enable them and then use the session hash from routes and views:

enable :sessions

get '/foo' do
  session[:message] = 'Hello World!'
  redirect '/bar'
end

get '/bar' do
  session[:message]   # => 'Hello World!'
end

If you need to set additional parameters for sessions, like expiration date, use Rack::Session::Cookie directly instead of enable :sessions (example from Rack documentation):

use Rack::Session::Cookie, :key => 'rack.session',
                           :domain => 'foo.com',
                           :path => '/',
                           :expire_after => 2592000, # In seconds
                           :secret => 'change_me'

How do I use session-based flash? {#flash}

Use Rack::Flash.

Can I run Sinatra under Ruby 1.9? {#ruby19}

Yes. As of Sinatra 0.9.2, Sinatra is fully Ruby 1.9 and Rack 1.0 compatible. Since 1.1 you do not have to deal with encodings on your own, unless you want to.

How do I get the "route" for the current page? {#path_info}

The request object probably has what you're looking for:

get '/hello-world' do
  request.path_info   # => '/hello-world'
  request.fullpath    # => '/hello-world?foo=bar'
  request.url         # => 'http://example.com/hello-world?foo=bar'
end

See Rack::Request for a detailed list of methods supported by the request object.

How do I access helpers from within my views? {#helpview}

Call them! Views automatically have access to all helper methods. In fact, Sinatra evaluates routes, views, and helpers within the same exact object context so they all have access to the same methods and instance variables.

In hello.rb:

helpers do
  def em(text)
    "<em>#{text}</em>"
  end
end

get '/hello' do
  @subject = 'World'
  haml :hello
end

In views/hello.haml:

%p= "Hello " + em(@subject)

How do I render partials? {#partials}

Sinatra's template system is simple enough that it can be used for page and fragment level rendering tasks. The erb and haml methods simply return a string.

Since Sinatra 1.1, you can use the same calls for partials you use in the routes:

<%= erb :mypartial %>

In versions prior to 1.1, you need to make sure you disable layout rendering as follows:

<%= erb :mypartial, :layout => false %>

See Sam Elliott's partials.rb for a more robust partials implementation. It even supports rendering collections and partials in subdirectories. It was adapted from Chris Schneider's partials.rb implementation to remove dependency on #extract_options! and add subdirectory support.

Use it as follows to render the _mypartial.erb(1) or the admin/_mypartial.erb(2) partials, or with a collection (3) & (4):

<%= partial(:mypartial) %> <!--(1)-->
<%= partial(:'admin/mypartial') %> <!--(2)-->
<%= partial(:object, :collection => @objects) %> <!--(3)-->
<%= partial(:'admin/object', :collection => @objects) %> <!--(4)-->

In (1) & (2), the partial will be rendered plain from their files, with no local variables (specify them with a hash passed into :locals). In (3) & (4), the partials will be rendered, populating the local variable object with each of the objects from the collection.

Can I have multiple URLs trigger the same route/handler? {#multiroute}

Sure:

["/foo", "/bar", "/baz"].each do |path|
  get path do
    "You've reached me at #{request.path_info}"
  end
end

Seriously.

How do I make the trailing slash optional? {#slash}

Put a question mark after it:

get '/foo/bar/?' do
  "Hello World"
end

The route matches "/foo/bar" and "/foo/bar/".

How do I render templates nested in subdirectories? {#subdir}

Sinatra apps do not typically have a very complex file hierarchy under views. First, consider whether you really need subdirectories at all. If so, you can use the views/foo/bar.haml file as a template with:

get '/' do
  haml :'foo/bar'
end

This is basically the same as sending #to_sym to the filename and can also be written as:

get '/' do
  haml 'foo/bar'.to_sym
end

I'm running Thin and an error occurs but there's no output {#thindebug}

Try starting Thin with the --debug argument:

thin --debug --rackup config.ru start

That should give you an exception and backtrace on stderr.

How do I send Email from Sinatra? {#email}

How about a Pony (sudo gem install pony):

require 'pony'
post '/signup' do
  Pony.mail :to => 'you@example.com',
            :from => 'me@example.com',
            :subject => 'Howdy, Partna!'
end

You can even use templates to render the body. In email.erb:

Good day <%= params[:name] %>,

Thanks for my signing my guestbook. You're a doll.

Frank

And in mailerapp.rb:

post '/guestbook/sign' do
  Pony.mail :to => params[:email],
            :from => "me@example.com",
            :subject => "Thanks for signing my guestbook, #{params[:name]}!",
            :body => erb(:email)
end

How do I escape html? {#escape_html}

Include Rack::Utils in your helpers and create an h alias as follows:

helpers do
  include Rack::Utils
  alias_method :h, :escape_html
end

Now you can escape html in your templates like this:

<%= h scary_output %>

Thanks to Chris Schneider for the tip!

How do I use ActiveRecord migrations? {#ar-migrations}

From Adam Wiggins's blog:

To use ActiveRecord’s migrations with Sinatra (or other non-Rails project), add the following to your Rakefile:

namespace :db do
  desc "Migrate the database"
  task(:migrate => :environment) do
    ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
    ActiveRecord::Migration.verbose = true
    ActiveRecord::Migrator.migrate("db/migrate")
  end
end

This assumes you have a task called :environment which loads your app’s environment (requires the right files, sets up the database connection, etc).

Now you can create a directory called db/migrate and fill in your migrations. I usually call the first one 001_init.rb. (I prefer the old sequential method for numbering migrations vs. the datetime method used since Rails 2.1, but either will work.)

How do I use HTTP authentication? {#auth}

You have at least two options for implementing basic access authentication (Basic HTTP Auth) in your application.

I. When you want to protect all requests in the application, simply put Rack::Auth::Basic middleware in the request processing chain by the use directive:

require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'

use Rack::Auth::Basic, "Restricted Area" do |username, password|
  [username, password] == ['admin', 'admin']
end

get '/' do
  "You're welcome"
end

get '/foo' do
  "You're also welcome"
end

II. When you want to protect only certain URLs in the application, or want the authorization to be more complex, you may use something like this:

require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'

helpers do

  def protected!
    unless authorized?
      response['WWW-Authenticate'] = %(Basic realm="Restricted Area")
      throw(:halt, [401, "Not authorized\n"])
    end
  end

  def authorized?
    @auth ||=  Rack::Auth::Basic::Request.new(request.env)
    @auth.provided? && @auth.basic? && @auth.credentials && @auth.credentials == ['admin', 'admin']
  end

end

get '/' do
  "Everybody can see this page"
end

get '/protected' do
  protected!
  "Welcome, authenticated client"
end

How do I test HTTP authentication? {#test_http_auth}

Assuming you have this simple implementation of HTTP authentication in your application.rb:

require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'

use Rack::Auth::Basic do |username, password|
  [username, password] == ['admin', 'admin']
end

get '/protected' do
  "You're welcome"
end

You can test it like this with Rack::Test:

ENV['RACK_ENV'] = 'test'

require 'rubygems'
require 'test/unit'
require 'rack/test'

require 'application'

class ApplicationTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  include Rack::Test::Methods

  def app
    Sinatra::Application
  end

  def test_without_authentication
    get '/protected'
    assert_equal 401, last_response.status
  end

  def test_with_bad_credentials
    authorize 'bad', 'boy'
    get '/protected'
    assert_equal 401, last_response.status
  end

  def test_with_proper_credentials
    authorize 'admin', 'admin'
    get '/protected'
    assert_equal 200, last_response.status
    assert_equal "You're welcome", last_response.body
  end
end