Rails Articles

Run Your Rails App On Kubernetes: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

Kubernetes has become very popular in recent years as a way to deploy applications using containers. In this article, Geshan shows us how to get a Rails app up and running inside a local K8s cluster.

Using DynamoDB in Your Rails App

DynamoDB is a NoSQL database offered by AWS. It can be a great way to avoid adding load to your primary database when you need tens of thousands of reads/writes per second. In this article, Julie Kent walks us through the basics of using DynamoDB with Rails.

ActiveSupport's #descendants Method: A Deep Dive

The #descendants method is part of Rails. It returns all subclasses that inherit from a given class. In this article, Jonathan Miles shows us how to use this method and how it's implemented. It's a great lesson in the ins and outs of Ruby's object model.

Multi-Factor Authentication for Rails With WebAuthn and Devise

If someone steals your password, they can pretend to be you. That's why many companies provide two-factor or multi-factor authentication via a fingerprint scan, a YubiKey, an authenticator app, or SMS. In this article, Petr Hlavicka will give you a solid foundation of knowledge about multi-factor authentication and will walk you through implementation with Rails, Webauthn, and Devise

Building a Real-Time Chat App in Rails Using ActionCable and Turbo

Turbo and ActionCable make it a snap to create Rails applications that respond to user behavior in real-time. In this article, Abiodun shows us how to use them together to create a full-featured chat application in Rails.

Using ActiveRecord's #update_counters to Prevent Race Conditions

Race conditions are arguably the most insidious kind of bug; they're intermittent, subtle, and most likely to occur in production. ActiveRecord's update_counter provides us with a convenient way to avoid race conditions when incrementing or decrementing values in the database. In this article, Jonathan Miles shows us how to use it, how it's implemented, and other approaches to avoiding race conditions.

React on Rails: Building a Simple App

To decide on a front-end for your Rails app, you need a feel for the options. Does a certain JS framework speak to you or does it make you feel dirty inside? There's only one way to find out! In this article, Julio Sampaio walks us through creating a React app from scratch and integrating it with a Rails back-end via webpacker.

Using Angular with Rails 5

Before you can decide on a front-end for your Rails app, you need a feel for the options. Does a particular JS framework speak to you or does it make you feel dirty inside? There's only one way to find out! In this article, Julio Sampaio walks us through creating an Angular app from scratch and integrating it with a Rails back-end via webpacker.

Configure Your App with SSM Parameter Store

Configuring your Rails app via environment variables works well, but sometimes you want to be able to update your configuration on the fly. Here's a way to update your app's environment using SSM Parameter Store.

Why would you want to do this? Well...

Introducing Breadcrumbs

We added a useful debugging tool called Breadcrumbs. Check them out, and perhaps you will never need a random debug log in production ever again.

How We Migrated To Turbolinks Without Breaking Javascript

In this article, I'm going to tell you about our migration from PJAX to Turbolinks. The good news is that Turbolinks works surprisingly well out-of-the-box. The only tricky thing about it is making it work with your JavaScript. By the end of this article I hope you'll have a good idea of how to do that.

The honeybadger gem 4.0 has been released!

Last week we released version 4.0.0 of the honeybadger Ruby gem. This release includes a long-awaited feature which makes it even easier to customize your error reports before they are sent to Honeybadger. We also did some much-needed refactoring, and made a few removals and deprecations for good measure. Don't worry, though—most of the API remains unchanged, so upgrading should be a relatively painless process for most users.

The Case of the Flaky Test Suite

In this story, Jason Swett of The Ruby Testing Podcast discusses the pitfalls of external dependencies in your test suites, and how to avoid them.

Adding Context to Exception Classes

We recently shipped version 3.2 of the honeybadger Ruby Gem, which includes a new feature to make it easier to add context to your error reports.

JQuery-Free Rails and Legacy Browsers

Rails 5.1 will no longer depend on JQuery. I ran the UJS test suite on several versions of IE to see how nicely the new system plays with legacy browsers.

How to Manage Application Secrets in EC2

Are you deploying your apps to EC2 and wondering how to store your application secrets? Learn how to use KMS and IAM roles to store your secrets on S3 securely.

How HTTP headers get passed from nginx to your Ruby app

Whether you use rails, Sinatra, or Lotus, you don't really have to think about how cookies and other headers pass from nginx or apache, to the application server and into your app. We're going to examine this journey in a little more depth. Because it turns out that the story of headers contains a lot of interesting information about the history of the web.

Ditching your single page app for...turbolinks?

You tried turbolinks, once, and soon your app began to fail in strange and wonderful ways. But some people make it work. What's their secret? The answer is so simple, it just might amaze you.

How to add context data to exceptions in Ruby

Sometimes the standard backtrace / error message combo isn't enough. Sometimes you need extra data to locate the cause of an error. In this post we'll discuss three easy ways to add more context to your exceptions.

Remote Debugging with Byebug, Rails and Pow

Byebug is a simple to use, feature rich debugger for Ruby 2.x. In this post, we'll discuss how to set up remote debugging with byebug so that you can debug code running in Pow, Unicorn or other application servers.