Hauler

Replaces the default Rails asset management (Sprockets) with the superior Webpack.

Improve your DX (Developer Experience) by developing your application UI using JavaScript Components.

  1. Setup
    1. New Rails Application
    2. Existing Rails Application
  2. Installation
  3. Update
  4. Usage

Preparation

New Rails Application

Create your new application skipping all javascript assets and sprockets (where "my_app" refers to your app name).

rails new my_app --skip-javascript --skip-turbolinks --skip-sprockets

Existing Rails Applications

Remove sprockets from your application loaded modules inside the config/application.rb file.

If you used the default Rails generator, then replace the line require 'rails/all' with:

require 'rails'
# Pick the frameworks you want:
require 'active_model/railtie'
require 'active_job/railtie'
require 'active_record/railtie'
require 'action_controller/railtie'
require 'action_mailer/railtie'
require 'action_view/railtie'
# require 'sprockets/railtie'
require 'rails/test_unit/railtie'

If you used a custom Rails app generation, just remove the line:

require 'sprockets/railtie'

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'hauler'

And then execute:

bundle
bin/rails generate hauler:install

Set your application config.action_controller.asset_host using an environment variable.

export ASSET_HOST="//localhost:8080"

# config/application.rb
config.action_controller.asset_host = ENV.fetch('ASSET_HOST')

Update

bin/rails generate hauler:install

Usage

Run your rails server normally:

bin/rails server

In a different terminal window run Webpack dev server:

npm start

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/guzart/hauler.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

TODO

  • add "start" script that runs the hauler.js binary
  • install React dynamically, install if present or ask otherwise
  • install Sass dynamically, install if present or ask otherwise
  • add sensible defaults to the config template
  • should be able to append loaders or override them
  • one place for editing the asset host