Skip to content
Lucas Caton

Have a Rails 2 app? You can run it on the newest Ruby!

Lucas Caton

Lucas Caton

@lucascaton
old_rails_with_new_ruby-1024x641
Do you have a legacy Rails application which is still running on Rails 2?
There are several reasons to migrate your application to new Rails versions, like to improve the security, to be able to use a better syntax, to take advantage of new features and also because most of current gems will only work on Rails 3 or higher. However, sometimes it's hard to do that, especially for big projects. And certainly today there're many project still running on Rails 2.
But there's one good thing you can (and should) do! I'm talking about to use the newest Ruby version. Yes, I'm serious. When I wrote this post, the current Ruby version was 2.1.1 - and it's not so hard to get it working fine with Rails 2.
Obviously, would be better if you have a good test coverage.
That said, let's do it in a few steps:

Replacements

  • Gemfile
Rails 2 apps don't use Bundler by default, so if you don't have Bundler managing your gems yet, you should check here how to do that.
ruby
## There's no way to ensure that the next Ruby versions will work,
## but so far the current one works fine:
ruby '2.1.1'
## The same for rake:
rake '10.1.1'
## You might need the iconv gem:
gem 'iconv'
  • Rakefile
ruby
## Replace:
## require 'rake/rdoctask'
## with:
require 'rake/task'
  • config.ru
ruby
## Replace:
## require 'config/environment'
## with:
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/config/environment'
  • FasterCSV âž™ CSV
Replace all FasterCSV constants with CSV. Also, include require 'csv' to relevant files (or include the require to your config/environment.rb file).

Inclusions

  • config/environment.rb
ruby
## Include this before the `Rails::Initializer.run` line:
if RUBY_VERSION >= '2.0.0'
  module Gem
    def self.source_index
      sources
    end
    def self.cache
      sources
    end
    SourceIndex = Specification
    class SourceList
      # If you want vendor gems, this is where to start writing code.
      def search(*args); []; end
      def each(&block); end
      include Enumerable
    end
  end
end
  • config/initializers/paperclip.rb
ruby
## The patches below are needed when using an old version of PaperClip + Ruby 2.x
## https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip/issues/262
## https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip/commit/1bcfc14388d0651c5fc70ab9ca3511144c698903

module Paperclip
  class Tempfile < ::Tempfile
    def make_tmpname(basename, n)
      extension = File.extname(basename)
      sprintf('%s,%d,%d%s', File.basename(basename, extension), $$, n.to_i, extension)
    end
  end
end

module IOStream
  def to_tempfile
    name = respond_to?(:original_filename) ? original_filename : (respond_to?(:path) ? path : 'stream')
    tempfile = Tempfile.new(['stream', File.extname(name)])
    tempfile.binmode
    self.stream_to(tempfile)
  end
end

New files

  • config/initializers/ruby2.rb
ruby
## This is a very important monkey patch to make Rails 2.3.18 to work with Ruby 2+
## If you're thinking to remove it, really, don't, unless you know what you're doing.

if Rails::VERSION::MAJOR == 2 && RUBY_VERSION >= '2.0.0'
  module ActiveRecord
    module Associations
      class AssociationProxy
        def send(method, *args)
          if proxy_respond_to?(method, true)
            super
          else
            load_target
            @target.send(method, *args)
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end
end
  • config/initializers/rails_generators.rb
It'll prevent Rails migration generator from stop working, otherwise you'll receive the following error message:
ruby
undefined local variable or method `vars' for # Rails::Generator::Commands::Create
(Thanks to Mr. S and jnwheeler44 for helping me to fix this one)
ruby
## This is a very important monkey patch to make Rails 2.3.18 to work with Ruby 2+
## If you're thinking to remove it, really, don't, unless you know what you're doing.

if Rails::VERSION::MAJOR == 2 && RUBY_VERSION >= '2.0.0'
  require 'rails_generator'
  require 'rails_generator/scripts/generate'

  Rails::Generator::Commands::Create.class_eval do
    def template(relative_source, relative_destination, template_options = {})
      file(relative_source, relative_destination, template_options) do |file|
        # Evaluate any assignments in a temporary, throwaway binding
        vars = template_options[:assigns] || {}
        b = template_options[:binding] || binding

        # this no longer works, eval throws "undefined local variable or method `vars'"
        # vars.each { |k, v| eval "#{k} = vars[:#{k}] || vars['#{k}']", b }
        vars.each { |k, v| b.local_variable_set(:"#{k}", v) }

        # Render the source file with the temporary binding
        ERB.new(file.read, nil, '-').result(b)
      end
    end
  end
end

RSpec

  • Make sure you're using the last compatible version with Rails 2.3.18:
ruby
gem 'rspec', '1.3.2'
gem 'rspec-rails', '1.3.4'
  • Remove the file script/spec
  • Remove the following lines from the lib/tasks/rspec.rake file:
ruby
gem 'test-unit', '1.2.3' if RUBY_VERSION.to_f >= 1.9

rspec_gem_dir = nil

Dir["#{Rails.root}/vendor/gems/*"].each do |subdir|
  rspec_gem_dir = subdir if subdir.gsub("#{Rails.root}/vendor/gems/","") =~ /^(\w+-)?rspec-(\d+)/ && File.exist?("#{subdir}/lib/spec/rake/spectask.rb")
end

rspec_plugin_dir = File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../../vendor/plugins/rspec')

if rspec_gem_dir && (test ?d, rspec_plugin_dir)
  raise "\n#{'*'*50}\nYou have rspec installed in both vendor/gems and vendor/plugins\nPlease pick one and dispose of the other.\n#{'*'*50}\n\n"
end

if rspec_gem_dir
  $LOAD_PATH.unshift("#{rspec_gem_dir}/lib")
elsif File.exist?(rspec_plugin_dir)
  $LOAD_PATH.unshift("#{rspec_plugin_dir}/lib")
end

Ruby syntax

  • Ruby syntax has changed a bit, especially from 1.8.x to 1.9.x.
ruby
# Replace:
when 'foo': bar

# with:
when 'foo' then bar

The behaviour for protected methods in new Ruby versions is a little bit different. See more in this post.
ruby
# In some cases, you might need to replace:
respond_to?(:foobar)

# with:
respond_to?(:foobar, true)

ruby
# Replace:
order: [ :day, :month, :year ]

# with:
order:
  - :year
  - :month
  - :day

Ruby changes

  • The default encoding for Ruby 2.0 (or higher) is UTF-8
Remove all the code similar to:
ruby
# encoding: utf-8
Or:
ruby
$KCODE = 'UTF-8'

Update from July 27th, 2014

Check out the below comments from Gabriel Sobrinho, Kyle Ries and Greg - all very useful.

Conclusion

Different project might have different issues, but I hope this little guide helps you to use new Ruby versions on your legacy Rails applications!

Post updated at 02/10/2017, 10:00:00