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[ToDoList] Docker Compose

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We learned in the previous section how Docker is a fantastic tool with which to build and deploy applications, however has some inconveniences with developing these apps such as having to rebuild the image every time there is a code change as well as any development database entries being wiped. This section will offer some relief against these two issues by using Docker Compose to build our application and make live code changes, as well as using a separate container to host our development database in PostgreSQL - this will encompass three main tasks: Back up and edit the Dockerfile we made in the previous section so our image can be built. Create our docker-compose.yml in the app's root directory to create our web & postgresql database containers. Back up and edit some our app's configuration (namely the database.yml & Gemfile ) to use the new postgresql container . After all this, we can set about ...
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[ToDoList] Dockerising the App

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So we've covered all the basic Ruby and Rails magic that has allowed us to build a basic web application, as well as made it look like a passably professional piece of work. This certainly deserves another whoop of celebration if you're not already whooped out. However at this point, you might already have run into problems with the joys Ruby / Rails / Bundler / Node versions, particularly if you have been working on different systems. It is also entirely possible that you're a bit sick of the VM or online IDE you are using to build the app, and you are hoping for a better solution. The solution to both of these is the mighty Docker ( other container frameworks are available ). You may have already heard of Docker, being a tool that essentially revolutionised app development and deployment by using a funky little addition to the Linux kernel: namespaces . Think of these almost as Virtual Machines (though much, much cooler an...
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[ToDoList] Basic Pages

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Well that was fun. However all we’ve really done is spooked someone called Bob, without actually creating anything remotely resembling a web application. Let’s rectify this and create some pages one would normally find on a website; a Home page and an About page. Home & Away About Helpful Links [Insert Beatles Reference]     Because we already learned a bit about MVC, we know that we will need a controller and at least one view to display these pages (we won’t need to worry about models until we’re handling real data). As before, we’ll need to add a route configuration so Rails knows where to go, too. Rails provides a fair bit of magic to streamline this process in the form of generators . However, because we’re learning, we’re going to do this manually for now and learn what this magic entails, so we can appreciate it more later. We already created a PagesController in the...
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New Rails Apps with Docker Compose

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Following on from the Docker & docker-compose guides, it is possible to use docker-compose to build a Rails application that uses a PostgreSQL database without even installing Ruby on your local machine by instead using containers ! This becomes a very useful option to have if you work from many different workstations and don't want to ensure they are all equipped with the correct Ruby and Rails dependencies, or if you wish to use a version of Ruby / Rails not supported by your operating system (for example, Ubuntu 20.04 only allows provides up to Ruby 2.7 in its apt cache). In fact, Rails 7 added native support for Docker, such that it generates almost all of the default files we need for us! This comes with its problems and, I won't lie, updating this post to work with Rails 7 (it was previously written for Rails 6) has been a colossal pain and features a bit of hackery. However it is ultimately a good thing, and having ...
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[ToDoList] Building the App

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The new Generator The Rails Development Server     So we have now learned some theory about Rails and set up our development environment with the required packages and version control prerequisites. I think that’s enough preamble, let’s get developing! The next few sections will involve creating a funky little web app that contains a To-Do list that we can add, remove and edit entries from. We saw a very small snippet of the extensive file structure that Rails uses in the first section. If you thought you’d be constructing the longest mkdir -p command in the observable universe to get all of this set up, you will be pleased to know (as I was) that our first utilisation of Rails magic will be to get Rails to generate all of this for us! Feel free to set up a projects directory on your dev machine, or you can just use your home dir if you’d prefer. Whatever you choose, change into this dir n...
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