I've set papertrail to only record changes containing a whodunnit value/when an admin makes a change by using the below condition in my model:
has_paper_trail if: proc { |model| PaperTrail.request.whodunnit.present? }
However I've noticed there are still a decent amount of records being stored with empty whodunnit values. From having a look at the records, these seem to be mostly 'update' actions all having empty object changes for some reason. I am unsure as to why the value is empty, or how it would get saved at all considering the above condition.
I am getting whodunnit values from warden in my application controller using:
def user_for_paper_trail
request.env['warden']&.user(:admin)&.id
end
Has anyone come across similar behaviour before?
Adding a source_location
and command
field to your papertrail versions table will help you:
nil
whodunnit changes.To do this, create a migration to add the source_location
and command
fields to your Versions table:
class AddSourceLocationAndCommandToVersions < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_column :versions, :source_location, :text
add_column :versions, :command, :text
end
end
I have the following set up in my papertrail.rb
. I am using the JSON serializer
but these changes may work with the normal serializer. The code after the serializer
declaration is what is of interest to you:
require "paper_trail/frameworks/rails"
require "paper_trail"
# the following line is required for PaperTrail >= 4.0.0 with Rails
PaperTrail::Rails::Engine.eager_load!
PaperTrail.config.enabled = true
PaperTrail.serializer = PaperTrail::Serializers::JSON
# Store some metadata about where the change came from, even for rake tasks, etc.
# See: https://github.com/paper-trail-gem/paper_trail/wiki/Setting-whodunnit-in-the-rails-console
def PaperTrail.set_global_metadata
request.controller_info ||= {}
request.controller_info[:command] ||= "#{File.basename($PROGRAM_NAME)} #{ARGV.join ' '} (#{$PID})"
request.controller_info[:source_location] = caller.find { |line|
line.starts_with? Rails.root.to_s and
!line.starts_with? __FILE__
}
end
# Defer evaluation in case we're using spring loader (otherwise it would be something like "spring app | app | started 13 secs ago | development")
# There's no way to set up deferred evaluation of PaperTrail.request.controller_info from here like
# we can with whodunnit, so abuse that property of PaperTrail.request.whodunnit to set other
# metadata. Reserve the whodunnit field for storing the actual name or id of the human who made the
# change.
PaperTrail.request.whodunnit = ->() {
PaperTrail.set_global_metadata
if Rails.const_defined?("Console") || $rails_rake_task
"#{`whoami`.strip}: console"
else
"#{`whoami`.strip}: #{File.basename($PROGRAM_NAME)} #{ARGV.join ' '}"
end
}
Rails.application.configure do
console do
PaperTrail.request.controller_info = { command: "rails console" }
PaperTrail.request.whodunnit = ->() {
PaperTrail.set_global_metadata
@paper_trail_whodunnit ||= (
if Rails.const_defined?("Console") || $rails_rake_task
"#{`whoami`.strip}: console"
else
"#{`whoami`.strip}: #{File.basename($PROGRAM_NAME)} #{ARGV.join ' '}"
end
)
}
end
end
Note that in any place where record creation occurs outside of a request, you can manually set the whodunnit
value to something specific if you don't want it blank. E.g. in my seed file I do the following:
class SeedCreator
def initialize
PaperTrail.request.whodunnit = ->() {
PaperTrail.set_global_metadata # save source_location & command
"seed" # set whodunnit value to "seed"
}
create_campaign
create_users
# more seeding of models....
end
end
In addition to improving the quality of your Papertrail table (knowing which command triggered a record update), this config should help you identify where phantom whodunnits
are being saved.
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