Because the contents of the local directory's .pryrc is evaluated before the :before_session hook from ~/.pryrc timing is a bit more delicate. I get around this by creating a custom function named _pry_before_session (but you could name it anything you want really) and have the ~/.pryrc's before_session hook execute it if it exists.

So my project's .pryrc:

#~/Projects/ActiveAvro/.pryrc
def _pry_before_session
  require 'active_avro'
  require 'spec_helper'
  ActiveAvroHelper.initialize
end

And my updated ~/.pryrc looks like this:

#~/.pryrc
require 'interactive_editor'

Pry.config.editor = "mate"
# add the current directories /lib and /spec directories to the path if they exist
before_session = Proc.new do |out, target, _pry_|
  dir = `pwd`.chomp
  %w(lib spec test).map{ |d| "#{dir}/#{d}" }.each { |p| $: << p unless !Dir.exists?(p) || $:.include?(p) }
  # if a local .pryrc defines a _pry_before_session function, execute it now
  send(:_pry_before_session) rescue nil
end
Pry.hooks[:before_session] = before_session

Ruby code you place in your ~/.pryrc is executed when your Pry session begins.

Here's the relevant lines from my ~/.pryrc that add the appropriate paths to $LOAD_PATH during start up.

#~/.pryrc
⋮
# add the current directories /lib and /spec directories to the path if they exist
before_session = Proc.new do |out, target, _pry_|
  dir = `pwd`.chomp
  %w(lib spec test).map{ |d| "#{dir}/#{d}" }.each { |p| $: << p unless !Dir.exists?(p) || $:.include?(p) }
end
Pry.hooks = { :before_session => before_session }

While I've got a fork with a pull request I'm fairly certain that the Apache software foundation has other... means of accepting patches so this pull request will be largely irrelevant.

Until the problem is fixed and propagated to the thrift gem you can monkey patch this issue yourself:

# encoding: utf-8
module Thrift
  UTF8_ENCODING = "utf-8"
  class BinaryProtocol
    def write_string(str)
      write_i32(str.bytesize)
      trans.write(str)
    end
  end

  class HTTPClientTransport < BaseTransport
    def write(buf)
      puts "write"
      @outbuf << buf.force_encoding(UTF8_ENCODING)
    end
  end
  class FramedTransport < BaseTransport
    def write(buf,sz=nil)
      buf.force_encoding(UTF8_ENCODING)
      return @transport.write(buf) unless @write

      @wbuf << (sz ? buf[0...sz] : buf)
    end
    def flush
      return @transport.flush unless @write
      out = [@wbuf.length].pack('N')
      out.force_encoding(UTF8_ENCODING)
      out << @wbuf
      @transport.write(out)
      @transport.flush
      @wbuf = ''
    end
  end
  class BufferedTransport < BaseTransport
    def write(buf)
      @wbuf << buf.force_encoding(UTF8_ENCODING)
    end

    def flush
      if @wbuf != ''
        @wbuf.force_encoding(UTF8_ENCODING)
        @transport.write(@wbuf)
        @wbuf = ''
      end

      @transport.flush
    end
  end
end

While I can't vouch for the production worthiness of the above code I can say it at least gets me past an aggravating hurdle.

When you Run > Edit Configurations in RubyMine you can create a number of different configurations. One of these is a regular Ruby script which can be useful for running such tasks as guard. You select the full path to the *.rb file and then you click the Share configuration check box. You might wonder how you express those paths as relative to the project path; after all you want to share the configuration with your teammates and their paths won't likely match your own.

Well it turns out there's no secret sauce to make this work; RubyMine will substitute the macro value $PROJECT_DIR$ if the script's path is relative to the project you currently have open. In the UI you'll see the fully expanded path, but when you commit your shared project settings the macro value is what is actually recorded in the *.xml file. When your teammates pull down your shared configurations it will be relative to their project's path.

So to get Guard (with Spork) running in RubyMine I did the following:

1. Created a run_guard.rb file in my project's root

#./run_guard.rb
exec 'guard'

2. RubyMine: Run > Edit Configurations
3. Hit the + and add a new Ruby script
4. Name it Guard, select the full path to the run_guard.rb, select the Bundler tab, check run in the context of Bundler (for good measure)
5. .idea is correctly in my .gitignore file... but the shared configs live under .idea/sharedConfigurations/
6. git add -f .idea/sharedConfigurations/Guard.xml and commit, push

Run the new Guard configuration and you'll see it display in one of the output panes at the bottom of the screen by default. When you save your specs it will automatically run as normal (but beware that ⌘S saves all files).

We also found out that pry statements in your RubyMine hosted Guard process won't allow you to interact with the running test session; instead the process will just hang.

Update: some more useful RSpec information with RubyMine:

Built in spec task: If your spec task is dying because you've configured a DRb server via Guard (using Spork) and you don't plan on running the built-in Spork task within RubyMine you'll need to make some changes to your Spork.prefork block and add an environment variable for the Guard script itself (Run > Edit Configurations) named "RUBYMINE_HOME" and point it to your RubyMine's application path (i.e. for me its /Applications/RubyMine EAP.app/). Now when Guard is running your built-in rspec task can execute without dying.

growlnotify: if you still want Growl notifications for your RubyMine hosted Guard you may need to sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/growlnotify /usr/bin/growlnotify.

My spec ended up looking like this...

#./spec/controllers/file_test_api_controller_spec.rb
⋮
  describe "#raw_upload" do
    before do
      # file_path points to a file I used dd to generate that is 11,776 bytes
      bytes = File.open(file_path, 'rb').read
      @request.env['RAW_POST_DATA'] = bytes
      post :raw_upload, { }, 'CONTENT_TYPE' => 'application/octet-stream'
      @request.env.delete('RAW_POST_DATA')
    end
    subject { response }
    its "status" do
      should == 200
    end
    its "body" do
      should =~ /size.*11776/m
    end
  end
⋮

To access this data directly in your controller, you just use request.raw_post.

Its worth noting that my controller replies with a receipt in JSON that includes the size of the received data which is why the spec regexes the body for it - there's no automagic occurring with my controller's response.

This approach does not work with HTTP PUT as the RAW_POST_DATA request environment variable is cleared when a PUT is performed.

Reference: How to send raw post data in a Rails functional test?

/* ./app/assets/stylesheets/button_to.css.scss */
form.button_to {
	margin:0;
	padding:0;
	display:inline;
}

form.button_to div, form.button_to div input {
	display:inline;
}

If you are using Rails 3.x's asset pipeline, remember to add a line to your application.css to include the button_to asset - assuming you're breaking out your styles into separate files.

You can get around this by going around the missing attribute setter and changing the instance variable directly.

#./specs/controllers/some_controller_spec.rb
   # a new device is created here...
   ⋮
   @request.instance_variable_set(:@cookies, ActionDispatch::Cookies::CookieJar.build(@request))
   # the token is what we use to identify the device on subsequent requests
   # so our specs need to be able to create it when necessary
   @request.cookies.permanent.signed[:token] = [device.device_id, device.secret]
   ⋮
   # remainder of spec omitted

If you're doing stuff with the regular cookies hash you will need to merge! your cookies hash with the @request.cookies hash before building and assigning the full blown ActionDispatch::Cookies::CookieJar instance.

Reference: How to test cookies.permanent.signed in Rails 3

A little bit of background: we're using Twitter's Bootstrap in our project. There's a bit of ceremony around each field such that you need to do a .clearfix div, then a label, then a .input div and finally the input. I want to eliminate all those keystrokes so I can just do:

#./app/views/c2dm/new.html.haml
form_for @message, :url => {:action => 'create'} do |f|
  %fieldset
    = f.text_field :registration_id
    = f.text_field :collapse_key
    = f.text_area :message
    .actions
      %input.btn.primary{:type=>"submit"}

Here's the no-nonsense way of achieving this by adding a new class to your app/helpers/application_helper.rb (don't forget to restart your Rails server when you do this):

#./app/helpers/application_helper
⋮
# add these lines after the ApplicationHelper module
class BootstrapFormBuilder < ActionView::Helpers::FormBuilder
  helpers = field_helpers +
              %w{date_select datetime_select time_select} +
              %w{collection_select select country_select time_zone_select} -
              %w{hidden_field label fields_for} # Don't decorate these
  helpers.each do |name|
    define_method(name) do |field, *args|
      options_index = ActionView::Helpers::FormBuilder.instance_method(name.to_sym).parameters.index([:opt,:options])
      if options_index.nil?
        options = args.last.is_a?(Hash) ? args.pop : {} # pretty sure this shouldn't happen
      else
        options = args[options_index - 1] # -1 to account for the method name argument
      end
      label = label(field, options[:label], :class => options[:label_class])
      @template.content_tag(:div, :class => 'clearfix') do
        @template.concat(label)
        @template.concat(@template.content_tag(:div, :class => 'input') { @template.concat(super(field, *args)) })
      end
    end
  end
end

ActionView::Base.default_form_builder = BootstrapFormBuilder
# you can also register this in ./config/application in the config block
# but I was not having a lot of success going that way
# which is why I moved it to the ./app/helpers/application_helper.rb file

Ideally you'd add this somewhere outside of application_helper.rb and load it properly.

What I referenced:

advanced rails studio: custom form builder
Form Builders in Rails
Working With and Around FormBuilder

Updated: 12/21/2011 for handling methods where options isn't the last param.

This took entirely too long for me to sort out through trial and error, but here it is:

#/app/controllers/some_controller.rb
def schedule
    render :file => "#{Rails.root}/app/assets/resources/analytics/schedule.json",
      :content_type => 'application/json',
      :layout => false
end

#./server.rb
require 'net/http'

HOST = 'example.com'

get "/package/details.json/:id" do
  content_type "application/json"
  uri = URI::HTTP.build(
        :host  => HOST,
        :path  => "/package/details.json/#{params[:id]}",
        :query => 'some_parameter=abc'
  )
  Net::HTTP.get(uri)
end

get "/simulate/details.json/:device_identifier" do
  content_type "application/json"
  uri = URI::HTTP.build(
    :host => HOST,
    :path => "/simulate/details.json/#{params[:device_identifier]}"
  )
  Net::HTTP.get(uri)
end