SilentStream

SilentStream is an extraction of some parts of ActiveSupport's Kernel Reporting Core Extentions around silencing IO streams.

Since July 2014 silence_stream, silence_stderr, capture, silence, and quietly have been deprecated because they are not thread safe. See that discussion in the PR where it all went down. I rely on them a lot in single threaded code, and so I plan to keep them alive. With the exception of silence, which was just an alias of capture.

This gem was taken out of Rails but it is not Rails dependent. The extraction was total (even the tests!), and this is now a pure Ruby library, which can be used in any Ruby project without encumbrances. This gem has no runtime dependencies.

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One aspect of what this gem provides can be achieved with the Rails' built-in LoggerSilence, which is thread safe. You will have to decide what is right for you!

The reason for not keeping silence as it was in Rails 4, i.e. an alias of capture, is that the just mentioned LoggerSilence now uses this term, and it is shipping with Rails 5. I don't want to make this gem incompatible with Rails 5, so you will have to convert Rails <= 4 implementations that utilize silence over to capture when using this gem. One further point of difference is this gem does not add the methods to Kernel or Object. You can do that if you like via include. By default this gem does not pollute anything, so you will need to include SilentStream in any class using these methods.

Install the gem and add to the application's Gemfile by executing:

$ bundle add silent_stream

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

$ gem install silent_stream

silent_stream is cryptographically signed, and has verifiable SHA-256 and SHA-512 checksums by stone_checksums. Be sure the gem you install hasn’t been tampered with by following the instructions below.

Add my public key (if you haven’t already, expires 2045-04-29) as a trusted certificate:

gem cert --add <(curl -Ls https://raw.github.com/pboling/silent_stream/master/certs/pboling.pem)

You only need to do that once. Then proceed to install with:

gem install silent_stream -P MediumSecurity

The MediumSecurity trust profile will verify signed gems, but allow the installation of unsigned dependencies.

This is necessary because not all of silent_stream’s dependencies are signed, so we cannot use HighSecurity.

If you want to up your security game full-time:

bundle config set --global trust-policy MediumSecurity

NOTE: Be prepared to track down certs for signed gems and add them the same way you added mine.

Four standard methods you may be familiar with from ActiveSupport's previous implementation are provided:

silence_stderr
silence_stream
capture
quietly

They are direct replicas, except not mixed into Kernel or Object, so in order to use them you must mix them into your classes or modules.

class Bogosity
  include SilentStream::Extracted # allows use at instance level
  extend SilentStream::Extracted # allows use at class level
  # or
  include SilentStream # access everything, and add #silence_all method, see below
end

In addition there is a silence_all method that is a useful wrapper that can be easily instrumented (turned off and on) with an ENV variable switch.

Including the SilentStream namespace fully gives access to this enhanced method, as well as the extracted methods above, and also makes everything available at the class and instance levels.

class Bogosity
  include SilentStream # allows use of any method at instance or class level

  def silent
    silence_all(true) do
      puts "play that funky music"
      Rails.logger.info("git jiggy with it")
    end
  end
  class << self
    def noise
      silence_all(false) do
        puts "play that funky music"
        Rails.logger.info("git jiggy with it")
      end
    end
  end
end

And run

>> Bogosity.new.silent # has no output
=> nil
>> Bogosity.noise # is noisy
play that funky music
=> nil

Make the methods avaialble:

RSpec.configure do |conf|
  conf.include(SilentStream)
end

Then add a test on output:

it "has output" do
  output = capture(:stdout) { subject.request(:get, "/success") }
  logs = [
    "INFO -- request: GET https://api.example.com/success",
    "INFO -- response: Status 200",
  ]
  expect(output).to(include(*logs))
end

See it in practice in the specs for the oauth2 gem and the debug_logging gem

For most scenarios, simple. Change three lines. Here's an example from a gem I just converted from ActiveSupport to SilentStream (see commit)

gemspec diff:

-spec.add_development_dependency 'activesupport', '>= 5'
+spec.add_development_dependency 'silent_stream', '>= 1'

spec_helper.rb diff:

-require 'active_support/testing/stream'
+require 'silent_stream'

RSpec.configure do |config|
-  config.include ActiveSupport::Testing::Stream
+  config.include SilentStream

Run spec suite to verify everything is good. This gem is as close as can be to a drop-in replacement for Rails' ActiveSupport::Testing::Stream.

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

See SECURITY.md.

If you need some ideas of where to help, you could work on adding more code coverage, or if it is already 💯 (see below) check TODOs (see below), or check issues, or PRs, or use the gem and think about how it could be better.

We so if you make changes, remember to update it.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more detailed instructions.

Everyone interacting in this project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the .

Made with contributors-img.

Also see GitLab Contributors: https://gitlab.com/pboling/silent_stream/-/graphs/master

This Library adheres to . Violations of this scheme should be reported as bugs. Specifically, if a minor or patch version is released that breaks backward compatibility, a new version should be immediately released that restores compatibility. Breaking changes to the public API will only be introduced with new major versions.

Yes. But I'm obligated to include notes...

SemVer should, but doesn't explicitly, say that dropping support for specific Platforms is a breaking change to an API. It is obvious to many, but not all, and since the spec is silent, the bike shedding is endless.

dropping support for a platform is both obviously and objectively a breaking change

• Jordan Harband (@ljharb, maintainer of SemVer) in SemVer issue 716

To get a better understanding of how SemVer is intended to work over a project's lifetime, read this article from the creator of SemVer:

• "Major Version Numbers are Not Sacred"

As a result of this policy, and the interpretive lens used by the maintainer, you can (and should) specify a dependency on these libraries using the Pessimistic Version Constraint with two digits of precision.

For example:

spec.add_dependency("silent_stream", "~> 1.0")

See CHANGELOG.md for list of releases.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License . See LICENSE.txt for the official Copyright Notice.

Copyright (c) 2018 - 2020, 2024 - 2025 Peter H. Boling, RailsBling.com

You made it to the bottom of the page, so perhaps you'll indulge me for another 20 seconds. I maintain many dozens of gems, including this one, because I want Ruby to be a great place for people to solve problems, big and small. Please consider supporting my efforts via the giant yellow link below, or one of the others at the head of this README.