Initialise the Rails Application

Default Rails setup

• Ensure that your asdf plugins are up to date with asdf plugin update --all.

• Install the latest Ruby version with asdf install ruby latest (Check if it's supported by Heroku).

• Switch your global Ruby to the fresh one: asdf global ruby latest.

• Run gem update --system to update Ruby's default gems (e.g. bundler).

• Check if you are using the latest stable version of Rails with rails -v and update it if you are not. You can do this with gem update rails. Beware of beta versions.

• Start a new Rails project using

rails new [project-name] --database=postgresql --skip-kamal --skip-ci --skip-action-mailbox --template https://raw.githubusercontent.com/renuo/applications-setup-guide/main/ruby_on_rails/template.rb

where the project-name is exactly the one you chose before.

⚠️ You may want to choose a different database than Postgres, but most of the time this will be your choice.
If you do not need a DB you may rethink the fact that you may not need Rails at all: Take a look at Sinatra or Angular
You might also need actionmailbox of course, so always double-check the parameters that you are using.

⭐️ This setup does not include either js-bundling nor css-bundling by default.
It will start with the simplest possible Rails setup and will use sprockets and importmaps.
If you need to do fancy stuff, discuss with your team the opportunity of including a js-bundling and css-bundling tool.
We want to go "no build" whenever possible.

• Run bin/setup

• Run bundle exec rails db:migrate to generate an empty schema.rb file.

• Then check your default Rails setup by running rails s and visiting http://localhost:3000. You should be on Rails now, yay!

• Finally check if http://localhost:3000/up is green.

Adjustments

Some adjustments are made automatically by the template, but you should check them. Some other adjustments must be performed manually.

Automatic adjustments

⭐The Gemfile reads the required ruby version from the .ruby-version file. This is used by Heroku to determine what version to use. Deploio reads the ruby version from the Gemfile, with the .ruby-version file inlined into it. https://paketo.io/docs/howto/ruby/#override-the-detected-ruby-version

⭐️renuocop replaces the default rubocop-rails-omakase. We have our own set of rules at Renuo. You can discuss them at https://github.com/renuo/renuocop and you can also contribute to them.

⭐️a bin/check script is added to the project. This script will run all the tests of the project. It is used in our CI and can be used locally to check if everything is fine. You can customize it to your needs.

⭐️a bin/fastcheck script is added to the project. This script will run all the linters of the project. It is used in our CI and can be customized to your needs. It will be used as a hook before pushing to quickly check for linting issues.

⭐️a bin/run script is added to the project. This script will start the application.

⭐️bin/check, bin/fastcheck and bin/run are standardized tools for more convenience at Renuo.

Manual adjustments

Please perform these adjustments manually:

ENV variables

• Add dotenv-rails to Gemfile. Check the gem homepage to see how to install the gem.

• and create .env.example in the root folder of the project where you will specify the only environment variable you need for now: SECRET_KEY_BASE.

• Going forward we will only push the .env.example file to the repository in order to protect our env variables.

• Add .env to .gitignore

• Add the following section to your bin/setup script so that the .env is created from the .env when the project is setup locally:

  puts "\n== Copying sample files =="
  unless File.exist?('.env')
    system! 'cp .env.example .env'
  end
  

• add one more key to .env.example APP_PORT=3000

• To ensure you have all the required keys from the .env.example in your .env, create the initializer for dotenv-rails in config/initializers/dotenv_rails.rb:

Dotenv.require_keys(Dotenv.parse(".env.example").keys)

• Run bin/setup again.

Secrets

We store the secrets necessary to configure the project locally in a 1password Item. Create a new Item for the project called [project-name] project secrets of type note. Right click on the vault and select Copy Private link.

• Run the command renuo fetch-secrets --init [the vault private link] to create an empty secrets file.

The Item contains the fields that represent the ENV variables. You can use Text or Password fields. Check existing projects for an example of the usage.

Configuration customisation

• Update config/application.rb and set the default language and timezone

  config.time_zone = 'Zurich' # may vary
  config.i18n.default_locale = :de # may vary
  

• Update your config/environments/production.rb settings:

  config.force_ssl = true # uncomment
  config.log_level = ENV.fetch("RAILS_LOG_LEVEL", "warn") # change
  

• Update config/environments/development.rb settings:

  config.action_controller.action_on_unpermitted_parameters = :raise
  config.i18n.raise_on_missing_translations = true # uncomment
  
  config.generators do |g|
    g.apply_rubocop_autocorrect_after_generate!
  end
  

• Update config/environments/test.rb settings:

  config.action_controller.action_on_unpermitted_parameters = :raise
  config.i18n.raise_on_missing_translations = true # uncomment
  config.i18n.exception_handler = Proc.new { |exception| raise exception.to_exception } # add
  config.active_record.verbose_query_logs = true # add
  
  # add the following lines to the end of the file
  config.to_prepare do
    ActiveSupport.on_load(:active_record) do
      ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::PostgreSQLAdapter.create_unlogged_tables = true
    end
  end
  

• The default Content Security Policies should not always be activated, but rather only where there are platform secrets that need to be secured. This rule can be overwritten by a customer, if he opted into CSP when selecting his maintenance plans.

• If you're using a js-bundling tool, let's clean up after asset precompilation to reduce the size of your deployment. Although deplo.io doesn't have Heroku slugs, it is still good to set up. Add this to the Rakefile:

  Rake::Task['assets:clean'].enhance do
    FileUtils.remove_dir('node_modules', true)
    FileUtils.remove_dir('vendor/javascript', true)
  end
  

Finalising

• Check if the following scripts run successfully: bin/setup, bin/check, bin/run
• If they do, commit all your changes to the main branch with Git.