Does not reload code changes when using namespaces

[gururuby]

Hi, I have a controller(Subscriptions) inside the Dashboard module with action manage, eg (app/controllers/dashboard/subscriptions_controller.rb)

module Dashboard
  class SubscriptionsController < BaseController
     def manage
        authorize! Subscription.new
     end
  end
end

And my policies structure app/policies/dashboard/subscription_policy.rb

module Dashboard
  class SubscriptionPolicy < ApplicationPolicy
    def manage?
       true
    end
  end
end

When I change the policy(manage?) to false, then the changes do not apply, but everything works fine when I do not use namespaces, and I take subscription_policy to the root of the app / policies directory

Ruby 2.5.1
Rails 5.2.0
Action Policy 0.2.0

[jacobwalkr]

Could this be related to #14?

[gururuby]

@jacobwalkr may be. There are additions if I call authorize! and specify policy directly via the with option, changes in the policy are applied without restarting the server

[ycherniavskyi]

Got the same reload issue.
After some investigation found the reason - NamespaceCache class, which hold Hash with first-time loaded policy class and clear it only on init.

Seams that in development this cache must be disabled or must be clearing on each request.

[palkan]

@ycherniavskyi

Thanks for the investigation!

Seams that in development this cache must be disabled or must be clearing on each request.

We should add a configuration to disable this cache, and disable it by default in development env.

We can also embrace app.reload.before_class_unload callback for Rails 5 and clear the cache.

If anyone is willing to propose a PR – you're welcome! If not – I'll take care of it a little bit later.

[ycherniavskyi]

@palkan could you please explain a bit the exact purpose of NamespaceCache class. Why namespaced class has the cache but class without namespaced hasn't.

Also as I see from the source, found namespaced policy also cache in the object and in the thread. Will not it be easy and simple just remove NamespaceCache mechanism 🙂?

[palkan]

Why namespaced class has the cache but class without namespaced hasn't.

Namespaced lookup is more expensive. I've added a benchmark which shows that it could be 4x slower without cache:

Comparison:
               cache:   178745.5 i/s
             cache B:   169435.4 i/s - same-ish: difference falls within error
          no cache A:    95312.7 i/s - same-ish: difference falls within error
          no cache B:    43121.0 i/s - 4.15x  slower

Also as I see from the source, found namespaced policy also cache in the object and in the thread. Will not it be easy and simple just remove NamespaceCache mechanism 🙂?

NamespaceCache caches a policy class for a given namespace and a policy name, we use it every time we want to initialize a policy within the matching context.
Per-thread and instance caches store policy instances, they only re-used within a single request. We still have to resolve a policy class.

[palkan]

Fixed by 1d4a2e7 and released in 0.2.3.