Traceroute

A Rake task that helps you find the dead routes and actions for your Rails 3 app

Features

This Rake task investigates your Rails 3 application’s routes definition, then tells you unused routes and unreachable action methods.

Supported versions

Ruby 1.8.7, 1.9.2, 1.9.3, 2.0 (trunk)
Rails 3.0.x, 3.1.x, 3.2.x, 4.0 (edge)

Install

Put this line in your Gemfile:

gem 'traceroute'

Then bundle:

% bundle

Usage

Just run the following command in your Rails app directory.

% rake traceroute

What’s gonna happen then?

Consider you have the following routes.rb and a controller:

# config/routes.rb
YourRailsApp::Application.routes.draw do
  resources :users, :only => [:index, :show, :new, :create]
  match 'products/:id/purchase' => 'catalog#purchase', :as => :purchase
end

# app/controllers/users_controller.rb
class UsersController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @users = User.page(params[:page])
  end

  def index2
  end

  def show
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
  end
end

Running the Rake task will print something like this for you:

Unused routes:
  users#create
  users#new
  catalog#purchase
Unreachable action methods:
  users#index2

OMG super helpful, isn’t it?

FAQ

Q: It makes a fuss over the default route at the very bottom. WTF?
A: Please do not use that. Did you read the comment in your routes.rb? Actually this task will help you a lot to remove that evil route.

Q: "command not found: traceroute" Did you mean: tracert
A: I'm afraid you're using the wrong operating system.

Questions, Feedback

Feel free to message me on Github (amatsuda) or Twitter (@a_matsuda) ☇3☇3☇3

Contributing to Traceroute

Fork, patch, then send me a pull request.