How to Get a Complete List of All URLs in Your Rails Application

Описание: Discover how to effectively generate a complete list of all the `URLs` in your Ruby on Rails application for load testing and more.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/84290/ asked by the user 'Laurie Young' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/7473/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/90868/ provided by the user 'kch' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/13989/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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How to Get a Complete List of All URLs in Your Rails Application

If you're working with a Ruby on Rails application, you might have found yourself needing a comprehensive list of all the URLs that your application can generate. This could be for various reasons, such as preparing for load testing, ensuring that you have a thorough understanding of your site's structure, or even setting up a sitemap.

In this guide, I will guide you through the process of retrieving a full list of URLs from your Rails app, going beyond what is simply displayed by rake routes. The goal here is to generate an actual list of dynamically created URLs within your application.

Understanding the Problem

When developers run rake routes, they get a list of the defined routes from Rails. However, this list does not include dynamically generated pages or URLs. If your application has many routes that are generated based on user actions or database content, you'll need a way to extract the final URLs that users can access. This is particularly crucial if you're conducting load testing to simulate real user interactions and traffic.

The Solution: Using wget to Crawl Your Application

Fortunately, you can utilize a command called wget, along with some additional tools, to crawl through your application and gather the URLs. Below, I'll outline the steps to achieve this.

Step 1: Use wget Command

To get started, open your terminal and run the following command:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Let’s break down what this command does:

wget --spider: This tells wget to not download any files; only check if they are there.

-r, --recursive: Enables recursive downloading, allowing wget to follow links on the webpage.

-nv, --no-verbose: Turns off the verbosity, giving you a cleaner output without being completely silent.

-nd, --no-directories: Prevents wget from creating a directory structure, keeping it all flat.

-np, --no-parent: Ensures that wget does not ascend to the parent directory, limiting the crawl to the specified URL.

Step 2: Filter the Output with ack

The output of the wget command includes many lines, but you only want the URLs. Here’s where ack comes in handy:

ack -o '(?<=URL:)\S+': This filters the output to only show substrings that match the regex pattern. In this case, it captures any URL that follows the URL: prefix.

Example Output

When you execute the command successfully, you should see output similar to the following:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Each line represents a URL that wget was able to find while crawling the application.

Quick Reference of Wget Arguments

Here’s a quick recap of the wget command options used:

--spider: Don't download anything.

-r, --recursive: Specify recursive download.

-nv, --no-verbose: Turn off verbosity.

-nd, --no-directories: Don't create directories.

-np, --no-parent: Don't ascend to the parent directory.

Extra Notes About ack

ack is a powerful tool that is similar to grep, but with capabilities tailored for programmers, using Perl regular expressions. It allows for more complex searches and filtering within text. The -o option specifically tells ack to only output the matched substring, simplifying the result.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can effectively gather a full list of URLs from your Rails application. This is especially useful for load testing and ensuring that all routes are covered during performance evaluations. If you're looking to create comprehensive tests or ensure thorough site accessibility, having a complete URL list is invaluable.

Now you're equipped with the knowledge to extract URLs from your Rails app efficiently. Happy coding!