matt swanson 😈 @_swanson Twitter profile | Pikagi

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matt swanson 😈

@_swanson

12,240

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🎯 Building 🔥 Ruby on Rails tips 📻 ✌️ All killer, no filler 🍊 Karl Pilkington is my spirit animal

Indianapolis, IN

https://t.co/67BOoEsgTv

Joined February 2010

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

I strongly identify as a Product Engineer. Not as: - Developer (I only like building user-facing things) - Full stack (I want to help with shaping, roll-out, strategy) - Entrepreneur (not interested in company building) - Indie hacker (like working with team, not into quick and

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

25 year old me: don't write code comments, just use clear naming 35 year old me:

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

your javascript library could never

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

bro wtf is all this shit

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

The best book on how to get good Bet you've never even heard of it, much less read it...

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

3 months

this join table will save your startup $100,000

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

So much of SaaS is: build an API to wrap your database so that I can parse the JSON and put it into my own database

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Use Tailwinds `tabular-nums` to keep numbers in tables, counters, etc nicely aligned

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

5 years

🤯 Basecamp is building a fully-featured, in-browser email client...using a ridiculously small amount of JavaScript. A tiny keyboard shortcut lib, one polyfill, and boring old Stimulus/Turbolinks/Rails... 🙏 to @dhh for generously shipping source maps, amazing learning resource

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

The @t3dotgg Problem Teaching a generation of developers to race for quick dunks, ignore context when evaluating decisions, outsource thinking to who has the most internet points, and then crybully if anyone disagrees RE: Exiting the cloud I'm not sure if Theo has actually read

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

@mitchhanberg Comments are bad when other people write them. Comments are good when I write them. 😈

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

My brother is a React engineer. He is insanely gifted. We were looking at this data table with inline editing the other day and I asked him what it would cost to build it today with Rails. I will never forget his answer... "We can't, we don't know how to do it."

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Building a b2b SaaS product is 95% HTML forms and background jobs so get really fucking good at those

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

3 months

Our entire product is powered by these 30 lines of boring Rails code

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

Tailwind is so fucking good

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

the funniest microservice i ever had the pleasure to work with was the NavBarService in a suite of 3-5 web apps you had to make a separate http call to get the contents on the nav bar. when it was down or timed out, you lost the ability to click "Home"

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 months

People are out here depending on an external service and paying PER-REQUEST for API calls to do rate-limiting... Rails 7.2 lets you do all that with your existing app infra for free with one line of code

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Sometimes I write a TODO comment when we are waiting for a library to release a new version to fix a workaround or patch But even better is a test that will fail when you've upgraded the library so you remember to go back

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

Three Rails methods you'll kick yourself for not knowing 🤦

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

I saw @JoshWComeau link this beautiful site of conic CSS gradients: Just a few lines to add conic gradients to your Tailwind config!

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

25 year old me: "ooh a new gem for authorization with a quirky name and terse DSL" 35 year old me:

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Building a b2b SaaS product is 95% forms and background jobs so get really fucking good at those

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

You probably knew about querying dates in ActiveRecord using a Range, but did you know about the Rails `all_month` helper? 💅

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

11 months

Is there any reason to use Redis over SQL in 2023? SQLite, LiteFS, and huge SSDs for cheap might have flipped the equation

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

3 years

If you type `cal 3 2022` into your terminal, you can get an ASCII calendar (March 2022) that you can add as a comment to your tests Extremely helpful when doing date math

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

Building a b2b SaaS is basically 95% forms and background jobs so get really fucking good at those

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

Some Rails methods you'll kick yourself for not knowing 🤦

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

Unpopular advice for junior engineers: - Work in-person at a project-based consultancy (regardless of tech stack) - Use open source, but do not try contributing - Editor fiddling, vim, exotic terminals are a total waste of time - Anything beyond "git 101" doesn't matter

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

🧮 Ruby's Enumerable #tally is so underused It's great for quickly exploring your data without writing a bunch of loops and counters

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

9 months

🏕️ Campfire source diving: soft-deleting users Many apps reach for a gem to handle soft-deletion of records. In the case of Campfire, you want to support deleting a user, but you don't want to lose all the messages. Other tools like GitHub use a "ghost user"

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

3 years

Huge 🤯 today: built the historically super annoying "dynamic list of form fields" in Rails without any JS, Stimulus, weird hidden markup, or new AJAX endpoints Key point: you can use turbo-stream elements in normal views!

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Love to see @t3dotgg pile into a github repo when you know his ass would make five videos about "open source harassment" if it was his project

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

When I first started doing web development, I thought I hated ORMs because I was using tools like NHibernate and drowning in a sea of "projection mappings" and DTOs Then I found ActiveRecord and I've never wanted to use anything else ♥️

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Skeleton loaders with Rails + Hotwire + Tailwind Use a <turbo-frame> with `lazy: true` and put the loading state as the initial frame contents. Add some rough shapes and use Tailwinds `animate-pulse` to give it a subtle pulsing effect When the frame scrolls into the viewport,

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

"This core concept in Rails? You should not use it at all!" 🤦 Some people have really lost their way when it comes to code design

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

I don't think you can write this any cleaner than in Rails

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

🕵️ New in Rails 6.1: find records missing associations with `where.missing`

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

🎣 Automatically cast params with the Rails Attributes API

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

let him cook

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

3 years

It's hacky but this might help you if you're working with turbo-frames: add this CSS in development 😎

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

You can define helpers in your .irbrc to quickly load records (like your own user account) in the Rails console

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

9 months

🏕️ More Campfire source diving: flash messages CSS animation + `animationend` event + self-destructing Stimulus controller to show the flash message then fade it out after 5 seconds. No setTimeout! Don't think I've ever seen this approach before

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

I very rarely use an external gem for APIs anymore. Too much hassle (upgrades, weird generated code, not following Ruby/Rails idioms) for the cost. You can wrap most APIs in less than 50 lines of code, especially if you only need to interact with a small subset of the endpoints

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

🧠 Key takeaway from @adamwathan Full Stack Radio interview with @dhh on Hotwire: start simple at the top of the stack and layer on *as you need it* Each page in your app will have different needs and may not warrant going all the way down the stack every time.

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

🧮 Enumerable #tally is still underused in Rails apps It counts the occurrence of each element in a list

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

👮 @dhh has teased "console1984", a new gem that helps you access customer data from the console in a responsible manner... Fun Friday hack: build a crappy version in ~30 lines of Ruby

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

9 months

An elegant "capped collection" from the Campfire code User searches are stored as database records, but after each one is created, destroy any that are outside of the most recent 10 (nice usage of the Rails 7 `excluding`!) Would have maybe expected Kredis for this, but callback

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Two years into this codebase and still loving this pattern for organizing features by module Keeps related methods together and makes it easier to find relevant code as the codebase grows. Plus I can separate out test files by feature.

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

It's little things like this that make you never want to leave Rails

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

🍅 Unpopular advice for junior engineers: - Work in-person at a project-based consultancy (regardless of tech stack) - You don't need to contribute to open source - Vim and exotic terminals are a waste of time - Skip anything beyond "git 101" for now - YouTubers are not mentors

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

It's wild that in the past 15 years there hasn't been a better Ruby/Rails talk than this:

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Whenever possible, return chainable ActiveRecord relations instead of arrays when doing complex queries. If you need to break out early, use `Product.none` If you need to drop down to Ruby, collect the ids and re-query

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

🗜️You probably want `compact_blank` most places you are using `compact`

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

🛑 Stop: using Date.parse and to_i ✅ Start: using Rails attributes API for casting

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

3 years

React? Vue? Nope. It's just Rails `button_to` inline forms and a <turbostream> response 😎

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

I always forget that you can sort variables alphabetically straight from VS Code 🤦

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

It's been 3 days since a video said "Sadly the [Rails] creator seems pretty done with change and he refuses to acknowledge a lot of things that have pushed the web forward since his time" Meanwhile Bun support for Rails was merged 🤷

@dhh

DHH

1 year

Love the work that @bunjavascript is doing to simplify life in the JavaScript world. Happy to merge @jmeller 's patch to add support for it in jsbundling-rails ✌️

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Hotwire Strada will be shown at RailsWorld 👀

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

⚡️ Add this `.irbrc` file and your Rails console will show a colorized banner with the environment Never accidentally run something in a production-connected Rails console again!

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

I was radicalized against Big Javascript when I had to write the most mundane settings page in an app and we had to use React + Redux + Jest and it took 2 weeks

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Did you know you can test a multi-user flow with Capybara and Rails system tests? Try the `using_session` block to switch between sessions. I've used this a ton to set workflows like User A submits something, User B approves, User A should see it as completed

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

3 years

📧 Add a more personal touch to your Rails mailers with `email_address_with_name`

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Use a Rails initializer to stop your app from booting if it's missing required environment variables. (Make the name `initializers/01_ensure_env.rb` to make sure it runs first)

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Please remove any code you wrote for displaying phone numbers and use the Rails built-in instead 🙏

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

> reads one paragraph of a blog post > livestreams creating spam PR to 700+ people > pulls up dunk tweets from people that aren't involved > "I am proud of my work" DONT HARASS PEOPLE THO 🤡

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

What is your favorite Ruby/Rails method? Mine is probably `compact_blank` in ActiveSupport If removes all `blank?` values from arrays and hashes so you can confidently chain additional collection methods

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

🤼‍♂️ Sort ActiveRecord models by an enum value (in SQL!) using `in_order_of` Super handy to float results to the top of a list

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

I can't believe how "egregiously fucked over" I am without TypeScript definitions for Turbo. Really feeling the "user hostile dickwaddery" today. What's that? You didn't realize that you just import the library and aren't calling it directly?

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

If you don't deploy on Fridays (you care about your engineers), do you also not deploy: - Late in the day (on-call) - In the morning (west coasters not up yet) - Mondays (kickoff calls), etc This thinking leads to one 15min window every 2nd Wednesday when you actually ship

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

Really digging this pattern for organizing different 'features' of a model. Keeps related methods together and makes it easier to find relevant code as the codebase grows. Plus I can separate out test files by feature.

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

The amazing part is that I built this with an HTML form and I didn't need a serverless edge compute function to transpile my runes into typesafe headless components!

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

You can query recently created records with an endless range instead of dropping down to raw SQL fragments

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

This is the ideal Rails view. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

5 years

👋 Working on a new project: I've been using this unsexy, "boring" Rails stack for close to a year at work and think it's compelling. Will share what I've found for folks *not* working at the extremes of either scrappy MVP or mega-corp.

Boring Rails: Skip the bullshit and ship fast

Learn about the boring tools and practices used by Basecamp, GitHub, and Shopify to keep you as happy and productive as the day you typed rails new

boringrails.com

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

Programmers coming from other ecosystems are often shocked at much Ruby looks like pseudocode. Instead of using methods like `gsub` or `chomp`, you can write super readable alternatives with `delete_prefix` and `delete_suffix`

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

8 months

I didn't have time to write you a short answer, so I wrote you a long one - Often people feel the desire to have "attribute-level" validations because they don't have enough controllers. The 1:1 mapping of resource and controller is great early on but it is actively harmful if

@bjessbrown

Jess Brown

8 months

Usually people write a blog post to share something they learn. I'm flipping that. I need you to teach me something. Know anything about authorization? Help me out...

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

we are so back

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

One of the best ways to level up your Rails app design is to have more controllers and namespaced models so you can stick to REST conventions The missing ingredient is to use a `Scoped` concern to slim down the controllers and centralize logic

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

I always forget that you can sort variables alphabetically straight from VS Code 🤦

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

11 months

A sneaky but potentially very bad mistake: reusing `REDIS_URL` in Rails for too many things You probably do not want: Kredis, Rails cache, ActionCable, Sidekiq, etc to be using the same Redis database These tools all have different eviction policy needs and storage

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

11 months

Don't get the hate on , it's pretty much all upside: - bunch of new 37s code/libraries will be available to read/learn from - self-hosted tools for small teams that you could use - if it works, pressure on cloud vendors for price reductions - someone else

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

⚓️ Combine `redirect_to` with the `anchor` option after editing a record from a list to keep your scroll position

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

3 years

🧮 Quickly explore your data with Ruby Enumerable methods `uniq` and `tally`

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

☝️ Today's "of course there's a Rails helper for that..." `link_to_unless_current` - renders an <a> tag unless the href is to the current URL. Handy for nav bars or tabs!

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 years

How can you not love Ruby/Rails? I mean honestly?

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Never build a seach box without this feature

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

Stop writing `i % 2 == 0` or `if i.odd?` in your view loops. Next time bust out `cycle` 🚲

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

10+ years of using Rails and still finding new features. Used Association Extensions this week so I could add a convenience finder method on a has_many

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

In the Rails console (or IRB), you can use `_` to get the result of the last run command 😲

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

Ever accidentally email 100s of real customers from your staging/demo server? Couldn't be me. Add this to your Rails app to intercept and re-route all emails to your own account.

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

7 months

IMO a Hotwire app should be like 85% Drive, 10% Frames, 5% Streams -- often I see people (including articles/guides) that have it almost completely flipped.

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

3 years

I would love to see a revived "Rails Rumble" (48 hour build the coolest thing with Rails virtual hackathon) in 2021. Anyone else?

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

9 months

One project for this year is to write the best resource for building Rails UI with ViewComponents What else would you like covered?

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

1 year

I've never once in the many years I've been doing Rails development regretted extracting a controller. I've never wished my controllers were bigger, I've always wished I had more of them and they were smaller.

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

10 months

2024 Rails "unsolved problems" if you're looking for inspiration for a tool/content/course - Managing test data effectively beyond the basics: factories and fixtures both have big drawbacks, could be reimagined. what do other ecosystems do? - shadcn components as server-side

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

2 months

Happy Friday, add "req/sec" to your muted words today and ship something to customers

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 months

📘 Writebook source-diving: Scoped module Common DHH/37s pattern here, but still underused -- pull common controller code for looking up a record into a `Scoped` module Use that for nested controllers: In Writebook, there is `BookScoped` to handle the common operation of

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@_swanson

matt swanson 😈

4 years

📌 I think the most underrated #Rails helper is `dom_id` Two things I use it for regularly: deep linking (anchor links, redirect back locations) and for targeting elements in browser tests

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