Hi, Wojtek here. Let’s explore this week’s changes in the Rails codebase.

Update Action View to use HTML5 standards-compliant sanitizers
Add support for HTML5 standards-compliant sanitizers, and default to Rails::HTML5::Sanitizer in the Rails 7.1 configuration if it is supported. Action View’s HTML sanitizers can be configured by setting config.action_view.sanitizer_vendor. Supported values are Rails::HTML4::Sanitizer or Rails::HTML5::Sanitizer.

Add “path_params” to “url_for”
The url_for helpers now support a new option called path_params. This might be useful in situations where you only want to add a required param that is part of the route’s URL but for other route not append an extraneous query param.

Assign auto populated columns on Active Record object creation
Changes record creation logic to allow for the auto_increment column to be assigned right after creation regardless of it’s relation to model’s primary key. PostgreSQL adapter benefits the most from the change allowing for any number of auto-populated columns to be assigned on the object immediately after row insertion utilizing the RETURNING statement.

Handle “sanitize_options” in “simple_format” helper
Sanitize functionality can now be configured via passed options.

Set “default_shard” from “connects_to” hash
Some applications may not want to use :default as a shard name in their connection model. Unfortunately Active Record expects there to be a :default shard because it must assume a shard to get the right connection from the pool manager. Rather than force applications to manually set this, connects_to can infer the default shard name from the hash of shards and will now assume that the first shard is your default.

Add health check configuration
Added health_check_path and health_check_application config to mount a given health check rack app on a given path. Useful when mounting Action Cable standalone.

Support VISUAL env var and prefer it over EDITOR
When opening a temporary file for editing encrypted files.

Allow an Active Storage attachment to be removed via a form post
Attachments can already be removed by updating the attachment to be nil such as: 

User.find(params[:id]).update!(avatar: nil)

However, a form cannot post a nil param, it can only post an empty string. But, posting an empty string would result in an ActiveSupport::MessageVerifier::InvalidSignature: mismatched digest error being raised, because it’s being treated as a signed blob id. Now, nil and an empty string are treated as a delete, which allows attachments to be removed via:

User.find(params[:id]).update!(params.require(:user).permit(:avatar))

You can view the whole list of changes here.
We had 23 contributors to the Rails codebase this past week!

Until next time!