- ruby rails
If you often create new Rails apps, application templates can be a real timesaver.
They have a very simple API, which allows developers to make changes to the Gemfile, execute Rails or Git commands, manage files and more.
Here’s a simple template I use to generate a new Rails app with Devise already set up:
gem 'devise'
after_bundle do
rails_command 'generate devise:install'
rails_command 'generate devise User'
end
The first line adds Devise to the Gemfile and the after_bundle hook runs two generators provided by the gem after the app is done bundling.
To generate an app from this template we need to add the -m option to rails new:
$ rails new my_app -m ~/src/rails-templates/devise.rb
# lots of output
After the app is done, let’s verify that Devise was installed and the generators ran correctly:
$ rg devise Gemfile*
Gemfile
56:gem 'devise'
Gemfile.lock
78: devise (4.7.1)
219: devise
$ head -n5 config/initializers/devise.rb
# frozen_string_literal: true
# Use this hook to configure devise mailer, warden hooks and so forth.
# Many of these configuration options can be set straight in your model.
Devise.setup do |config|
$ cat app/models/user.rb
class User < ApplicationRecord
# Include default devise modules. Others available are:
# :confirmable, :lockable, :timeoutable, :trackable and :omniauthable
devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable,
:recoverable, :rememberable, :validatable
end
Note that we can also execute a template in the context of an already generated app:
$ rails app:template LOCATION=~/src/rails-templates/devise.rb
#Making it interactive
The template API allows for some interactivity via the ask and yes?/no? methods:
if yes?("Add devise?")
gem 'devise'
after_bundle do
rails_command 'generate devise:install'
rails_command "generate devise #{model}"
end
end
This will interrupt app generation to ask for user input:
...
apply /Users/michi/template.rb
Add devise? y
gemfile devise
run bundle install
...
#Summary
For anyone creating lots of Rails apps, custom templates can be a real time-saver. I favor an approach of having many smaller for dedicated tasks and adding them an already created project as needed.
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