production-only bug? undefined method 'merge' for nil:NilClass

[simplicoder]

Hi,
I'm having trouble running my CE app in production mode.
Dev mode works fine.

Please check out this pastie:
http://pastie.org/362037

When doing a rake:db:migrate in production I get this:
rake aborted!
undefined method `merge' for nil:NilClass
/Users/csmos/Projects/community/vendor/plugins/community_engine/app/
controllers/users_controller.rb:15

It works fine in dev as shown in the pastie.

I thought maybe for some reason it wasn't executing the engine_config/
boot...
so I put this at the end of my evironment.rb file...

p 'BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH'
# Community-engine boot
require "#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/plugins/community_engine/engine_config/
boot"

the BLAHs get output in the successful dev enviro, but not production.

I'm stumped, any thoughts are appreciated.
Thanks!

[simplicoder]

I'm using CE v0.10.8 and engines 2.2.2

I've also tried the master branch...
-=C=-

[simplicoder]

So the problem was trying to override users_controller by copying it
out of the plugin into the main app dir.

It seems to have config code that calls AppConfig... and production
mode doesn't like this??

[Bruno Bornsztein]

Hmm.. this isn't happening to me on my production sites. Anyone else seeing this?

Looks like line 15 of UsersController is calling AppConfig.default_mce_options, which for some reason is undefined at that time. Might have something to with the plugin's load order.

Have you copied the entire UsersController out of CE and put it in your own app directory?

[simplicoder]

Yes I copied it straight out, no mods or anything.
The plugin order in environment.rb is what you said to put...

Now the comments_controller is giving me fits.
I copy it straight out of the plugin to the main app dir... no
modifications.

Works fine in dev.
But in production I get this error:
NoMethodError in CommentsController#create
undefined method `controller_name' for nil:NilClass

Try it out with a fresh rails project and CE install... just overwrite
the comments_controller and see if the same thing doesn't happen for
you in production mode...

I don't know if it's an engines problem or if production rails is
ignoring the config.plugins directive or what.

If anyone gets it to work please zip it up and post it somewhere for
me, so I can diff it, because I'm hella stumped.

Thanks for any help!

On Jan 16, 8:58 am, "Bruno Bornsztein" <bruno.bornszt...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hmm.. this isn't happening to me on my production sites. Anyone else seeing
> this?
>
> Looks like line 15 of UsersController is calling
> AppConfig.default_mce_options, which for some reason is undefined at that
> time. Might have something to with the plugin's load order.
>
> Have you copied the entire UsersController out of CE and put it in your own
> app directory?
>

[Bruno Bornsztein]

You shouldn't be copying the entire controllers out of CE. You just need to override the particular actions you'd like to change.

[simplicoder]

Ok, I guess I didn't understand the way engines worked.
Apparently only methods can be overwritten.

I thought it would just be easier to copy the whole thing, as the
engines docs say it simply overrides the plugin controller.

Thanks for your help!

On Jan 16, 2:47 pm, "Bruno Bornsztein" <bruno.bornszt...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> You *shouldn't* be copying the entire controllers out of CE. You just need

> to override the particular actions you'd like to change.
>

[Bruno Bornsztein]

You can override the whole controller, but in some cases that will cause problems, as in your case. Because you replaced the whole users_controller, and users controller calls AppConfig when loaded, you got an error in production, because your app's users_controller was being loaded before AppConfig was set (it gets set in the CE plugin).

[simplicoder]

Well that's kinda weird I guess...

What's worse is even if you have nothing in the top-level
users_controller except,
class UsersController < BaseController
end

It still throws the production exception, so there's no way to
override any methods for users I guess, except editing the plugin's
users_controller.... I guess maybe with a mixin module would be
easiest.

On Jan 16, 3:10 pm, "Bruno Bornsztein" <bruno.bornszt...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> You *can* override the whole controller, but in some cases that will cause

> problems, as in your case. Because you replaced the whole users_controller,
> and users controller calls AppConfig when loaded, you got an error in
> production, because your app's users_controller was being loaded

> *before*AppConfig was set (it gets set in the CE plugin).

[simplicoder]

Ok so in order to be able to override users_controller at all, you
gotta add this line:

AppConfig.default_mce_options ||= {}

above this line, in the plugin's users_controller, line 15:
uses_tiny_mce(:options => AppConfig.default_mce_options.merge
({:editor_selector => "rich_text_editor"}),
:only => [:new, :create, :update, :edit, :welcome_about])

Then everything should work in production.

Don't know why it cares so much about that in production and not dev.

I'd like to see a dev vs production documentation on the differences
and order-of-operations for engines, though maybe this is a rails
problem, I dunno.

[Bruno Bornsztein]

I think this might be specific to your environment. I have several apps where I'm overriding users_controller without problems. Anyone else experience something like this?

[simplicoder]

Well I uploaded my barebones app so you can try it out for yourself,
ce-barebones-debug.zip.

It's a straight engines 2.2.2 & CE v0.10.8 install, with only two
files in the app dir, a view file copy of offerings/
_chooser.html.haml ... and an users_controller copy only without any
methods or anything in it.

run script/server -e production

when I and my coworkers on their respective macs try it, we have
errors.

I put the view one in there because it shows exactly how odd it is
that production catches a haml error in the main app dir, but not in
the engines dir.

Check it out, lemme know how it works for you.

On Jan 16, 6:00 pm, "Bruno Bornsztein" <bruno.bornszt...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think this might be specific to your environment. I have several apps
> where I'm overriding users_controller without problems. Anyone else
> experience something like this?
>

[simplicoder]

Here's a link to that file:
http://communityengine.googlegroups.com/web/ce-barebones-debug.zip

[sprite]

I have the same issue.

> > > > > > > > >undefinedmethod`controller_name' for nil:NilClass

> > > > > > > > > > > > >undefinedmethod`merge' for nil:NilClass

[jak4]

Me too. And I can't figure out why.

Just doing
class MyUsersController < UsersController
end

results in the merge error (in Production of course). AppConfig is
partially set, as far as I can see, but default_tiny_mce and
simple_tiny_mce are definitely not there.

Any Ideas, apart from doing "AppConfig.default_mce_options ||= {}"?

[Bruno Bornsztein]

Ok, finally got around to checking this out (sorry, new baby!). This is a problem that has to do with the order that Rails loads controllers vs. plugins. The controllers in your app directory get loaded and mixed with the CE controller (Engines does this) before AppConfig has been defined (it gets definged later, when CE is loaded), thus the error.

For now, I'm not going to worry about this (especially with the changes to Engines coming in Rails 2.3). Probably the easiest way to solve it is to put a file called mce_options.rb in your app's initializers directory (see this pastie)

Other solutions are welcome, but again, this will probably all change with Rails 2.3.

Thanks,
Bruno