Getting ruby-openid OpenID gem to work with JRuby on Rails

As you may know a few native methods aren't yet implemented in JRuby and a few ones aren't even possible to implement due to the POSIX native calls.

I really don't know where odes FileTest#chardev? method fits in, but JRuby doesn't have it right now.

So if ever you want to use the 'ruby-openid' gem in your JRuby on Rails using for instance the official wrapper, there is a workaround.
Indeed if you do nothing, either at the rake setup, either at startup, you'll get something like:

=> Booting WEBrick...
/home/rvalyi/DEV/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27: FileTest#chardev? not yet implemented (NotImplementedError)
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/livetribune/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ruby-openid-1.1.4/lib/openid.rb:1:in `new_constants_in'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/livetribune/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ruby-openid-1.1.4/lib/openid.rb:1:in `require'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:32:in `require'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:32:in `require'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/livetribune/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/livetribune/vendor/plugins/open_id_authentication/init.rb:120:in `new_constants_in'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/livetribune/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
from /home/rvalyi/DEV/livetribune/vendor/plugins/open_id_authentication/init.rb:120:in `binding'


The workaround is to override the FileTest module and define a stub value for the chardev? method. That method is to return true or false. Returning always true for that useage seems to work well.

So at the VERY BEGINNING of your environment.rb, just write:

module FileTest
def self.chardev?(file_name); return true; end
def chardev?(file_name); return true; end
end


Then Open Id is going to play nice with your JRuby on Rails app. At the time I'm speaking, I'm on JRuby SVN head trunk and the String#split method is having a little bug that'll ouput a stack trace but fortunately this has no consequence on the functionality.

JRuby rocks!