Web Console

There is no doubt that rails console is one of the most useful commands, Rails has to offer. However, sometimes you can't easily access it, or maybe you want to share it with a coworker without configuring remote desktop server.

This is where Web Console comes to the rescue. It gives you the same rails console experience, right in the browser. It's not just a tool that let's you evaluate Ruby code, there are a lot of those. It's your IRB session, the way you configured it.

Requirements

To run Web Console you need to be running Rails 4 and MRI Ruby 1.9.3 and above. It may run on Rubinius and JRuby, but we haven't tested those yet.

Installation

To install it in your current application, add the following to your Gemfile.

group :development do
  gem 'web-console', '~> 0.1.0'
end

After you save the Gemfile changes, make sure to run bundle install and restart your server for the Web Console to take affect.

By default, it should be available in your development environment under /console. The route is not automatically mounted in a production environment and we strongly encourage you to keep it that way.

Configuration

Today we have learned in the agony of war that great power involves great responsibility.

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Web Console is a powerful tool. It allows you to execute arbitrary code on the server, so you should be very careful, who you give access to it.

config.web_console.whitelisted_ips

By default, only requests coming from 127.0.0.1 are allowed.

config.web_console.whitelisted_ips lets you control which IP's have access to the console.

Let's say you want to share your console with just that one roommate, you like and his/her IP is 192.168.0.100.

class Application < Rails::Application
  config.web_console.whitelisted_ips = %w( 127.0.0.1 192.168.0.100 )
end

From the example, you can guess that config.web_console.whitelisted_ips accepts an array of ip addresses, provided as strings. An important thing to note here is that, we won't push 127.0.0.1 if you manually set the option!

Now let's assume you like all of your roommates. Instead of enumerating their IP's, you can whitelist the whole private network. Now every time their IP's change, you'll have them covered.

class Application < Rails::Application
  config.web_console.whitelisted_ips = '192.168.0.0/16'
end

You can see that config.web_console.whitelisted_ips accepts plains strings too. More than that, they can cover whole networks.

Again, note that this network doesn't allow 127.0.0.1. If you want to access the console, you have to do so from it's external IP or add 127.0.0.1 to the mix.

config.web_console.default_mount_path

By default, the console will be mounted on /console.

(This happens only in the development and test environments!).

Say you want to mount the console to /debug, so you can more easily remember where to go, when your application needs debugging.

class Application < Rails::Application
  config.web_console.default_mount_path = '/debug'
end

Restart your server and you are done!

Test Drive

If you just want to try the web-console, without having to go through the trouble of installing it, we provide a Docker container that does that for you.

To try it, install Docker, clone the project and run the following snippet in the git root directory.

docker build -t gsamokovarov/web-console . && docker run -i -t !#:3