Rails How to use Hotwire Turbo in your Rails 6 project with Webpacker.
Background
Turbo can help refresh only a part of our webpage and don't need to refresh the whole page.
If we build a Single Page App or traditional web, we can do this by Ajax with json and JavaScript.
Now we have Turbo and don't need to write Ajax, json or JavaScript to make it.
After you have finished this tutorial, you will see that your Rails app works like a SPA. Cool. Isn't it.
Turbolinks is the old name of Turbo.
From https://github.com/hotwired/turbo-rails , we can see the official example video is represented with an assets pipeline example, not with Webpacker.
Goal
Here I will let you know how to integrate Turbo with Webpacker and Bootstrap 5.
Imagine that we have a navigation bar with some links. Each of those links maps to a Rails route. We hope that when we click those links, the navigation itself, the header and the footer not to be refreshed.
Steps
- Create a Rails 6 project (the default is using webpacker).
- Add
gem 'turbo-rails'to and removegem 'turbolinks'fromGemfile. - Run
bundle install. - Run
rails turbo:install. - Run
yarn add @hotwired/turbo-rails. - Find a file (like:
frontend.js) underapp/javascript/packs/and addimport "@hotwired/turbo-rails"to the first line. Then removeimport Turbolinks from "turbolinks"andTurbolinks.start()from this file.
Also in this file, add these code to make the frame have a blue border:
turbo-frame {
display: block;
border: 1px solid blue;
}
- In the file
app/views/layouts/application.html.erb, add these:
<head>
<%= csrf_meta_tags %>
<%= csp_meta_tag %>
<%= javascript_pack_tag 'frontend' %>
<%= stylesheet_pack_tag 'frontend' %>
</head>
<div class="row">
<ul>
<li>
<a data-turbo-frame="main_frame" href="<%= products_path %>">Product List </a>
</li>
<li>
<a data-turbo-frame="main_frame" href="<%= cdrs_path %>">CDR List </a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="row">
<turbo-frame id="main_frame">
<%= yield %>
</turbo-frame>
</div>
- In
app/controllers/products_controller.rb, write this:
class ProductsController < BaseController
# Remember to comment out this line like this. Just don't use a layout specifically. If you write a layout specifically, the layout will always be used!
# Also don't use `layout false`, otherwise when user open the url in a new browser tab, the default layout `application` was lost.
# In the end, you will have only one layout for the `Turbo` usage, that is the `app/views/layouts/application.html.erb`. And you need never specifically write `layout 'application'`.
# That is OK and good enough because you can dynamically generate the content of this `application.html.erb`.
# You can have other `logouts` for other pages which don't use `Turbo` like `sign_in` or `register` pages.
# layout 'application'
def index
@products = Product.all
end
end
- In
app/views/products/index.html.erb, write this:
<%= turbo_frame_tag "main_frame" do %>
<div class="row">
<h4>Product List</h4>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div>
<div class="card">
<div class="card-body">
<div class="table-responsive">
<table class="table table-centered table-borderless table-hover nowrap">
<thead class="table-light">
<tr>
<th>Product Name</th>
<th>Actions</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<% @products.each do |product| %>
<tr>
<td><%= product.name %></td>
<td>
<%= button_to i18n_action(:delete), product_path(product), method: :delete, data: { confirm: i18n_action(:delete_confirm), disable_with: 'Deleting...' }, class: 'btn btn-primary btn-sm' %>
</td>
</tr>
<% end %>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<%= enable_tooltip %>
<% end %>
Now you can see when you click the Product List link, only the main_frame is refreshed.
And the html returned from the Server side is generated only from the code in app/views/products/index.html.erb.
Code of app/views/layouts/application.html.erb are not used at all.
Tips
According to https://discuss.hotwired.dev/t/destroy-record-in-turbo-frame/2731/17 , you will have to use
button_totag like above in theapp/views/products/index.html.erbto make the record deletion.The Bootstrap tooltip will not be displayed because the html in
main_frameis generated after you click the nav link. So you will have to add this helper method:
def enable_tooltip
raw '<script>
var tooltipTriggerList = [].slice.call(document.querySelectorAll(\'[data-bs-toggle="tooltip"]\'))
var tooltipList = tooltipTriggerList.map(function (tooltipTriggerEl) {
return new bootstrap.Tooltip(tooltipTriggerEl)
})
</script>'
end
and call this method in app/views/products/index.html.erb like the example above.
- If you are using
Devise, you may find that the error message may not be displayed when typing a wrong password.
My solution is that you don't use app/javascript/packs/frontend.js in the layout of sign_in page.
Instead, you can write a new one like app/javascript/packs/blank.js, in this blank.js, don't add import "@hotwired/turbo-rails".
And use the blank.js in the new layout file app/views/layouts/blank.html.erb for the Devise sign_in page
, like this:
<head>
<%= javascript_pack_tag 'blank' %>
<%= stylesheet_pack_tag 'blank' %>
</head>
charlie_hsieh
hotwire-rails included stimulus-rails which is not a necessity in this example. 
