https://railsnotes.xyz/blog The Ruby on Rails guides you wished you had, when you were first starting out. Read interesting articles about Hotwire, Stimulus, ActionMailer, Databases, Deployment and more. en-us harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) Wed, 05 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/adding-redis-and-sidekiq-to-a-ruby-on-rails-app https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/adding-redis-and-sidekiq-to-a-ruby-on-rails-app Here are the basics of installing Redis and Sidekiq, and then adding Redis and Sidekiq to your Ruby on Rails app. This is everything you need to get set up — no fluff, just a couple of commands. Let's go! Wed, 05 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) redissidekiqdevelopmentprocfilepopular https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/ahoy-product-analytics https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/ahoy-product-analytics Learn how to use the Ahoy gem to track feature usage within your Ruby on Rails apps. Fri, 30 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) ahoyanalyticsgem https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/blazer-gem-rails https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/blazer-gem-rails Learn how to use the Blazer gem in your Ruby on Rails app to query data in SQL, build dashboards, and run automated checks. Fri, 30 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) blazeranalyticsgembi https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/custom-credentials-in-your-rails-app https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/custom-credentials-in-your-rails-app A deep dive into the basics of Rails credentials, explore their benefits and drawbacks, and showing you how easy it is to integrate this powerful tool into your Rails app development process... Sun, 14 May 2023 07:49:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) credentials https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/deploying-ruby-on-rails-on-render-with-databse-redis-sidekiq-cron https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/deploying-ruby-on-rails-on-render-with-databse-redis-sidekiq-cron A full guide for deploying a Ruby on Rails app to Render with a database, Redis, Sidekiq, and Cron jobs. This guide steps you through deploying your Rails app to Render, including setting up Redis, Sidekiq and Cron jobs to give you a great production-ready starter. Sun, 07 May 2023 17:16:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) renderdeployment https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/deploying-ruby-on-rails-with-dokku-redis-sidekiq-arm-docker-hetzner https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/deploying-ruby-on-rails-with-dokku-redis-sidekiq-arm-docker-hetzner This is the ultimate Dokku + Ruby on Rails guide — I cover running Dokku on x86 and ARM, deploying Sidekiq and Redis, dockerizing our Ruby on Rails app, and more... Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) deploymentdokkudockerpopular https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/feature-specs-to-system-specs https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/feature-specs-to-system-specs In this article, I break down the difference between system specs and feature specs in RSpec and Rails, and walk you through refactoring your feature specs to system specs. Sun, 17 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) rspectestingrefactoring https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/ferrum-stealth-browsing https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/ferrum-stealth-browsing Learn how to setup Ruby and Ferrum for stealthy web scraping and browsing, including setting up correct headers, proxying requests, rotating your user agents, restricting bandwidth usage and more. Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) ferrumweb-scraping https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/overmind-better-bin-dev-for-your-procfile-dev https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/overmind-better-bin-dev-for-your-procfile-dev Overmind is a Procfile manager on steroids — like Foreman and bin/dev, but... a lot better. It's deeply configurable, and integrates with tmux so you can stop, restart and attach to running processes. Wed, 26 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) procfiledevelopmentpopular https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/parallel-rspec https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/parallel-rspec Run RSpec in parallel and speedup your specs by 2x-4x locally using the handy parallel_rspec gem. Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) rspectests https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/preview-rails-emails-letter-opener-mailcatcher-mailhog https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/preview-rails-emails-letter-opener-mailcatcher-mailhog This article covers everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about previewing emails and ActionMailer templates in Ruby on Rails. I cover native ActionMailer previews, the letter_opener gem, MailCatcher and MailHog. I've tested them all, and I cover how to use them, and their pros and cons. Mon, 07 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) actionmailer https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/procfile-bin-dev-rails7 https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/procfile-bin-dev-rails7 Rails 7 introduced a lot of new things, but honestly, the `bin/dev` script is the thing I notice the most. I want to try to give your some insight into how `bin/dev` and `Procfile.dev` work together... Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) developmentprocfilepopular https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-8-whats-coming https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-8-whats-coming Work on Rails 8 is starting, so I dug through the official GitHub milestone to break down all the upcoming goodies for you. There's plenty coming, including Solid Queue, Solid Cache and Kamal becoming defaults, better support for PWAs, an official LSP, and more! Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) rails https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-actionmailer-attachments https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-actionmailer-attachments ActionMailer makes it easy to attach files to your emails. In this article, I show you how to attach single or multiple files, set custom encodings and mime_types, and attach images as inline attachments to display in your email body. Sat, 28 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) actionmailer https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-add-favicon-2-minutes https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-add-favicon-2-minutes This is a super short article on how to add a favicon to your Ruby on Rails app. We combine the favicon_link_tag helper with asset_path, which makes it quick and easy. Fri, 25 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) tips https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-credentials-vscode-edit https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-credentials-vscode-edit This short guide shows you how to use VS Code to edit secrets in your Ruby on Rails app when you run `rails credentials:edit`. I also include a handy `bin/credentials:edit` script to simplify things. Thu, 04 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) credentialsvscode https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-debugger-rdbg-vscode https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-debugger-rdbg-vscode A short introduction to the rdbg/debugger extension for VS Code, plus a guide on how to set it up correctly to debug your Ruby on Rails applications, as well as your RSpec specs. The VS Code extension takes 5 minutes to setup and it's great! Tue, 12 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) vscodedevelopmentdebugger https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-dynamic-nav-current-page https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-dynamic-nav-current-page This article explores a dynamic nav component I built using the current_page? helper method, plus Rails' conditional class helpers. The result? A simple, dynamic navbar component, with different styling based on current page. Plus I threw in the ViewComponent version too 😉 Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) uiviewcomponents https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-generate-migration https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-generate-migration A handy reference for generating migrations in your Ruby on Rails app — I cover the basics like adding columns and tables, adjusting column types (and loads more), plus some tips and tricks... Mon, 10 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) databasemigrationsgeneratorspopular https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-viewcomponent-tips https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/rails-viewcomponent-tips In this article, I share tips for writing Rails ViewComponents, based on my experience building RailsNotes UI, and other projects. If you use ViewComponents in your Ruby on Rails apps, read this article! Sat, 14 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) viewcomponentstips https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/refactoring-a-ruby-on-rails-app-to-use-actionmailer-for-transactional-email https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/refactoring-a-ruby-on-rails-app-to-use-actionmailer-for-transactional-email How I switched from using direct SendGrid API calls to implementing ActionMailer for cleaner, more manageable code. Our final implementation will take us from 36 lines of code, down to 1 ... Sat, 13 May 2023 15:38:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) actionmailerrefactoring https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/seed-your-database-with-the-faker-gem https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/seed-your-database-with-the-faker-gem We use the faker gem to seed our database with 10,000 fake posts. Then, we're going to speed up seeding by 9.4x, using either upsert_all or the activerecord-import gem. Sat, 15 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) databasegemfakeractiverecord-import https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/simple-lazy-loading-hotwire-turbo-frames-rails https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/simple-lazy-loading-hotwire-turbo-frames-rails Hotwire and Turbo Frames make it easy to add lazy-loading into our Rails apps — I'm talking only 12 lines of code! Plus, we can use TailwindCSS to create a skeleton loader for our Turbo Frames. Tue, 25 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) hotwiretailwindcsspopular https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/simple-stimulus-tabs-controller https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/simple-stimulus-tabs-controller In this article, I share a handy Stimulus controller for adding tabs to your Rails apps. I also show you a different variation of the controller, and how to add it to your views. Plus, I've included a handy tip to avoid the annoying "flashing in" effect that can happen if you're not careful. Thu, 24 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) stimulus https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/skip-rails-console-with-rails-runner https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/skip-rails-console-with-rails-runner If you're sick of typing rails console all day, or just want to learn about a cool Rails command, I've got something that you're going to like — the rails runner command. Fri, 04 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) tipsconsole https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/split-seeds-rb-by-rails-environment https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/split-seeds-rb-by-rails-environment This method to split your database seeds by Rails environment is clean and simple, and is perfect to split up your `seeds.rb` file. It's a brilliant method! I just wish I'd thought of it first 😅 Mon, 31 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) databaseseedingtips https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/the-simplest-ruby-on-rails-and-hotwire-app-possible-beginners-guide https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/the-simplest-ruby-on-rails-and-hotwire-app-possible-beginners-guide Most Rails apps probably don't need a React or Vue frontend. With a few lines of Rails and Hotwire magic, we can build a live frontend. That's what we're going to be doing today... Fri, 26 May 2023 09:06:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) hotwire https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/vscode-rails-setup https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/vscode-rails-setup Setting up VS Code for Ruby on Rails development can be tricky, so I wrote this article to help. In it, I share different VS Code extensions for things like autocomplete, linting, formatting and more! I've even put together a handy extension pack to get you setup fast. Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) vscodedevelopment https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/your-first-stimulus-controller-learn-stimulus-ruby-on-rails-by-building-a-toggle-beginners-guide https://railsnotes.xyz/blog/your-first-stimulus-controller-learn-stimulus-ruby-on-rails-by-building-a-toggle-beginners-guide So, you're new to Stimulus and want to try it out in your Ruby on Rails app. Or perhaps you just need a simple toggle pattern to follow. Either way, you're in the right place... Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT harrison@railsnotes.xyz (Harrison Broadbent) stimulus