Rails Basic Template

There is no need for developers to walking the same path, performing the same tasks at the beginning of any project, over and over again. That is what this series of articles has been about, streamlining our workflow.

I have writing about create templates for Rails before, but quite frankly, I have learned so much about Rails over the last six months, as I sharpen my skills while searching for a position, it bears touching this topic again.

This is a default/basic template:

• RSpec
• Code Quality with Rubocop
• Code Coverage
• Configure Rails generators
• Static routes
• No styling (this varies per project)
• No user accounts

TLTR: The Rails template is hosted in this Repository

The template design uses a modular design, so it is easy to maintain and turn off features if I desire. I am going to step through a few of the methods to explain my set up:

Setup Additional Gems

The first method adds new gem requirements to the 'Gemfile'. This does not install them, it only prepares for the installation. Most of these gems are to set up my testing, code quality, and code coverage norms I prefer.

def add_gems
  # Rexml is required for Ruby 3
  gem "rexml"

  gem_group :development, :test do
    gem "capybara", ">= 2.15"
    gem "database_cleaner"
    gem "factory_bot_rails", git: "http://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_bot_rails"
    gem "rspec-rails"
  end

  gem_group :development do
    gem "fuubar"
    gem "guard"
    gem "guard-rspec"
    gem "rubocop"
    gem "rubocop-rails", require: false
    gem "rubocop-rspec"
  end

  gem_group :test do
    gem "simplecov", require: false
  end

end

I have written on this topic before, and you can read more in my previous article: Rails testing Setup

Static Routes

This method sets up a static route controller with a view for a home route. This is a mounting point for any static routes the project may have:

def add_static
  generate "controller static home"

  route "root to: 'static#home'"
end

Copy Additional Files

We can stop here with one configuration file. However, we can also setup some files to copy for a more complete configuration:

def copy_templates
  remove_dir "spec"

  copy_file "Guardfile"
  copy_file ".rspec", force: true
  copy_file ".rubocop.yml"
  copy_file ".simplecov"

  directory "config", force: true
  directory "lib", force: true
  directory "spec", force: true
end

We are copying four files which are specifically for testing, code quality, and code coverage.

Whenever I use rails generators, I prefer to not create a lot of extra files I am not going to use, like stylesheets, helpers, and spec files. If I choose to use any of these resources, I would rather manually create them. So, I configure the generators in config/application.rb, and copy the config directory:

config.generators do |g|
  g.stylesheets false
  g.helper nil
  g.test_framework nil
end

Lastly, I remove the generated spec directory and copy a new one that includes the configuration I need, and one feature spec to test the static route.

Config File

To use the new template, you need to set up a .railsrc dotfile, in the users' path, in your $HOME directory. When you use the rails new command will inject commands to the command line silently. So my simple .railsrc file:

--database=postgresql --database=postgresql -T -m /path/to/template.rb

I can start a new project: rails new cool_app and silently the postgresql flag is added, no default testing framework is installed, and the custom setup installation process begins.

Remember to check out the complete Rail's template hosted in the Repository

Footnote

This has been fun. Leave a comment or send me a DM on Twitter.

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