Rails 7 application template

DFE-Digital/rails-template is a Rails application template that makes starting a new GOV.UK Rails project fast and fun.

What's included

• GOV.UK Frontend 4.4.1
• GOV.UK Components
• GOV.UK Form Builder
• RSpec
• Production/PaaS/Terraform ready Dockerfile
• (optional) Architecture decision record support
• (optional) GOV.UK styled error pages
• (optional) asdf versioning
• (optional) solargraph with bundled gem support and annotate
• (optional) Linting with rubocop-govuk, formatting with prettier/plugin-ruby

What's improved from the old boilerplate

• 🆕 Ruby 3, Rails 7, and the template does not require us to manually merge dependabot PRs or to keep Ruby/Rails up to date; that's handled by rails new!
• 🆕 rails/propshaft asset pipeline
• 🆕 cssbundling / jsbundling with dart-sass and esbuild, no more Webpack!
• 🆕 Importing improvements from the template

Requirements

• Ruby 3.2.2
• Rails 7.0.x
• Foreman

Tools optionally installed by asdf

The following tools will be installed by asdf if it is enabled during the setup process (see: How to setup a new project).

• NodeJS 18.x (installed using asdf)
• Yarn 1.22.x
• Postgres 13.x

If asdf is not used, ensure these are available and in your path. You can check this with:

$ ruby --version
ruby 3.2.2 (2023-03-30 revision e51014f9c0) [x86_64-linux]

$ rails --version
Rails 7.0.4

$ node --version
v18.1.0

$ yarn --version
1.22.19

$ foreman --version
0.87.2

$ pg_config --version
PostgreSQL 13.5

How to setup a new project

To create a new application called apply-for-a-juggling-licence:

rails new \
  --database=postgresql \
  --skip-bundle \
  --skip-git \
  --skip-jbuilder \
  --skip-hotwire \
  --skip-action-mailbox \
  --skip-action-mailer \
  --skip-action-text \
  --asset-pipeline=propshaft \
  --javascript=esbuild \
  --css=sass \
  -m https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DFE-Digital/rails-template/main/template.rb \
  apply-for-a-juggling-licence

The installer will ask you to confirm y/N if you want any optional features.

Once the project is set up, tidy up the README, it should already contain some references to helpful things like ADRs/linting if you opted into them.

Working with the project

# Make sure Postgres is running
cd apply-for-a-juggling-licence
asdf install           # Install Ruby/Node/other tools, see README
bin/setup              # Install gems, create databases, remove old logs
bin/dev                # Run the application in development mode using foreman
open http://localhost:3000

# Production
bin/rails db:create RAILS_ENV=production # Prepare database
docker build .                           # Build docker container
docker run --net=host \
  -e RAILS_ENV=production \
  -e RAILS_SERVE_STATIC_FILES=true \
  -e SECRET_KEY_BASE=local \
  <DOCKER_IMAGE_ID_FROM_BUILD_COMMAND>
open http://localhost:3000

Importing improvements from the template

We might make changes to the template to improve how things work, or add new features. We've tried to make it easy to benefit from these changes.

To apply the template to an existing project, run this from inside your project:

bin/rails app:template LOCATION=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DFE-Digital/rails-template/main/template.rb

The script will ask to overwrite diverging files; press the d key to see the diffs for each file, and choose accordingly. You might have to make some changes yourself if you've overriden certain files, like the layout.

Support

The DfE Rails template is a community resource. It is supported by @DfE-Digital. If you run into any problems using it or have ideas for new features you can raise an issue or ask questions on Slack.