Rails Protocol

A guide for writing great web apps.

Set Up Laptop

Set up your laptop with this script and these dotfiles.

Create App

Get Suspenders.

gem install suspenders

Create the app.

suspenders app --heroku true --github organization/app

Set Up App

Get the code.

git clone git@github.com:organization/app.git

Set up the app's dependencies.

cd project
./bin/setup

Use Heroku config to get ENV variables.

heroku config:pull --remote staging

Delete extra lines in .env, leaving only those needed for app to function properly. For example: BRAINTREE_MERCHANT_ID and S3_SECRET.

Use Foreman to run the app locally.

foreman start

It uses your .env file and Procfile to run processes like Heroku's Cedar stack.

Git Protocol

Follow the normal Git Protocol.

Product Review

Follow the normal Product Review protocol.

Code Review

Follow the normal Code Review guidelines. When reviewing others' Rails work, look in particular for:

Review data integrity closely, such as migrations that make irreversible changes to the data, and whether there is a related todo to make a database backup during the staging and production deploys.
Review SQL queries for potential SQL injection.
Review whether dependency upgrades include a reason in the commit message, such as a link to the dependency's ChangeLog or NEWS file.
Review whether new database indexes are necessary if new columns or SQL queries were added.
Review whether new scheduler (cron) tasks have been added and whether there is a related todo in the project management system to add it during the staging and production deploys.

Deploy

View a list of new commits. View changed files.

git fetch staging
git log staging/master..master
git diff --stat staging/master

If necessary, add new environment variables.

heroku config:add NEW_VARIABLE=value --remote staging

Deploy to Heroku staging.

git push staging

If necessary, run migrations and restart the dynos.

heroku run rake db:migrate --remote staging
heroku restart --remote staging

Introspect to make sure everything's ok.

watch heroku ps --remote staging

Test the feature in browser.

Deploy to production.

git fetch production
git log production/master..master
git diff --stat production/master
heroku config:add NEW_VARIABLE=value --remote production
git push production
heroku run rake db:migrate --remote production
heroku restart --remote production
watch heroku ps --remote production

Watch logs and metrics dashboards.

Close pull request and comment Merged.

Set Up Production Environment

Make sure that your Procfile is set up to run Unicorn.
Make sure the PG Backups add-on is enabled.
Create a read-only Heroku Follower for your production database. If a Heroku database outage occurs, Heroku can use the follower to get your app back up and running faster.