How to clear the cache of the Rack Attack only

[ndvbd]

How to clear the cache of the Rack Attack only? (clear state)
One way would be to simply change the cache prefix of the rack attack. How do we do that?

[grzuy]

There's not an easy way to do that currently.

We should add that as a new feature.

[ndvbd]

How can I change the cache prefix for the rack attack? It should be somewhere, shouldn't it? If I change the prefix, it will solve the problem, as it will invalidate the relevant cache entries.

[grzuy]

Yes, changing the prefix would be kind of workaround to start with a clean state.

Rack::Attack.cache.prefix = ... # default is 'rack::attack'

We should at some point provide a way to clean all the data without needing to hack the cache prefix anyway.

[grzuy]

@ndvbd Just curious, what was your motivation for clearing the cache? Were you needing that during test cases so to achieve proper test case isolation or was that a need for you on production?

[grzuy]

We should consider having a Rack::Attack.reset! method to reset all Rack::Attack's state (i.e. the cache).

Also discussed in #249 (comment).

[ndvbd]

@grzuy Yes. You sometimes need to clean the cache, especially during tests, but also on production. It's a good thing to have.

[lmansur]

@ndvbd what is your context on cleaning the cache on production? It's not something I see very often, so I'm just curious

[javierjulio]

For others that need this currently in their test suite, this is what we use in our RackAttack specific test cases:

  before do
    Rack::Attack.enabled = true
    Rack::Attack.cache.store = ActiveSupport::Cache::MemoryStore.new
  end

  after do
    Rack::Attack.cache.store.clear
    Rack::Attack.enabled = false
  end

Note that this makes use of the new enabled flag in RackAttack 6.2.0.

I like the suggestion of Rack::Attack.reset! or even another solution. Perhaps a method specific to clearing the cache or a test mode flag as suggested in #436.

[grzuy]

For others that need this currently in their test suite, this is what we use in our RackAttack specific test cases:

  before do
    Rack::Attack.enabled = true
    Rack::Attack.cache.store = ActiveSupport::Cache::MemoryStore.new
  end

  after do
    Rack::Attack.cache.store.clear
    Rack::Attack.enabled = false
  end

Note that this makes use of the new enabled flag in RackAttack 6.2.0.

I like the suggestion of Rack::Attack.reset! or even another solution. Perhaps a method specific to clearing the cache or a test mode flag as suggested in #436.

Hi @javierjulio ,

Going through this again, I am not sure we'll have something in Rack::Attack which will avoid you having to make an extra call to clear the storage.

I mean, you either:

1. Have Rack::Attack completely disabled for tests, via enabled = false or by using NullStore (config.cache = :null_store in rails).
2. Have Rack::Attack enabled for tests and some sort of reset state call (today Rack::Attack.cache.store.clear) somewhere in between test cases.

Were you expecting something different in that regard?
If so, what specifically?

Thanks.

[grzuy]

Rack::Attack.reset! has been merged in #436.