IMDb clone pet-app Rails & Docker

Mark Hladkov - 2023 year

Running this app on your local machine

Run the following algorithm to deploy this project on your local machine

Installation algorithm (steps):

1. git clone https://github.com/MarkOdinSon/IMDb-clone.git AppIMBbClone
   
2. cd AppIMBbClone
   
3. cp .env.example .env
   
4. docker-compose up --build
   
5. go to http://localhost:8000/
   Enjoy!

(following commands not necessary anymore, command #4 do it automatically)
`./run rails db:setup` (input in database some users and categories by default) file: db/seeds.rb
`./run rails db:migrate` `./run rails db:seed`
`./run bundle:install`

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To be sure that the database and Rails components are working correctly, run the following commands:

./run rails db:seed RAILS_ENV=test --trace
it must return: Created 3 Users; Created 26 Categories
docker-compose run -e "RAILS_ENV=test" web bundle exec rspec
it must return: 36 examples, 0 failures, 3 pending

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General information

This app is using Rails 7.0.4, Ruby 3.2.0, Redis 7.0.7, PostgreSQL 15.1.

Tech stack

If you don't like some of these choices that's no problem, you can swap them out for something else on your own.

Back-end

• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• Sidekiq (not necessary in this case)
• Action Cable (not necessary in this case)
• ERB
• Rspec-Rails

Front-end

• esbuild
• Hotwire Turbo
• StimulusJS
• TailwindCSS
• Flowbite
• Heroicons
• jQuery UI

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Files of interest

I recommend checking out most files and searching the code base for TODO:, but please review the .env and run files before diving into the rest of the code and customizing it. Also, you should hold off on changing anything until we cover how to customize this example app's name with an automated script (coming up next in the docs).

.env

This file is ignored from version control so it will never be commit. There's a number of environment variables defined here that control certain options and behavior of the application. Everything is documented there.

Feel free to add new variables as needed. This is where you should put all of your secrets as well as configuration that might change depending on your environment (specific dev boxes, CI, production, etc.).

run

You can run ./run to get a list of commands and each command has documentation in the run file itself.

If the commands you run with the ./run ... file don't work then try changing all the entries in the run file from "docker-compose" to "docker compose". Everything works for me when docker-compose is written.

It's a shell script that has a number of functions defined to help you interact with this project. It's basically a Makefile except with less limitations. For example as a shell script it allows us to pass any arguments to another program.

This comes in handy to run various Docker commands because sometimes these commands can be a bit long to type. Feel free to add as many convenience functions as you want. This file's purpose is to make your experience better!

If you get tired of typing ./run you can always create a shell alias with alias run=./run in your ~/.bash_aliases or equivalent file. Then you'll be able to run run instead of ./run.

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In development

Updating dependencies

Let's say you've customized your app and it's time to make a change to your Gemfile or package.json file.

Without Docker you'd normally run bundle install or yarn install. With Docker it's basically the same thing and since these commands are in our Dockerfile we can get away with doing a docker compose build but don't run that just yet.

You can run ./run bundle:outdated or ./run yarn:outdated to get a list of outdated dependencies based on what you currently have installed. Once you've figured out what you want to update, go make those updates in your Gemfile and / or package.json file.

Then to update your dependencies you can run ./run bundle:install or ./run yarn:install. That'll make sure any lock files get copied from Docker's image (thanks to volumes) into your code repo and now you can commit those files to version control like usual.

Alternatively for updating your gems based on specific version ranges defined in your Gemfile you can run ./run bundle:update which will install the latest versions of your gems and then write out a new lock file.

You can check out the run file to see what these commands do in more detail.

Action with test environmental

run rails:db seed for test environmental: ./run rails db:seed RAILS_ENV=test --trace

run rails console in test environmental: ./run rails console -e test

run RSpec with Docker in test environmental => docker-compose run -e "RAILS_ENV=test" web bundle exec rspec

Also, you can run all these commands in development environmental:

./run rails db:seed RAILS_ENV=development --trace

./run rails console

docker-compose run -e "RAILS_ENV=test" web bundle exec rspec

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Main changes vs a newly generated Rails app

Here's a run down on what's different. You can also use this as a guide to Dockerize an existing Rails app.

• Core:
  • Use PostgreSQL (-d postgresql) as the primary SQL database
  • Use Redis as the cache back-end
  • Use Sidekiq as a background worker through Active Job
  • Use a standalone Action Cable process
• App Features:
  • Add pages controller with a home page
  • Add up controller with 2 health check related actions
• Config:
  • Log to STDOUT so that Docker can consume and deal with log output
  • Credentials are removed (secrets are loaded in with an .env file)
  • Extract a bunch of configuration settings into environment variables
  • Rewrite config/database.yml to use environment variables
  • .yarnc sets a custom node_modules/ directory
  • config/initializers/rack_mini_profiler.rb to enable profiling Hotwire Turbo Drive
  • config/initializers/assets.rb references a custom node_modules/ directory
  • config/routes.rb has Sidekiq's dashboard ready to be used but commented out for safety
  • Procifile.dev has been removed since Docker Compose handles this for us
• Assets:
  • Use esbuild (-j esbuild) and TailwindCSS (-c tailwind)
  • Add postcss-import support for tailwindcss by using the --postcss flag
  • Add ActiveStorage JavaScript package
• Public:
  • Custom 502.html and maintenance.html pages
  • Generate favicons using modern best practices

Besides the Rails app itself, a number of new Docker related files were added to the project which would be any file having *docker* in its name. Also GitHub Actions have been set up.

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About the author

• Docker + Rails template origin: Nick Janetakis | https://nickjanetakis.com | @nickjanetakis [https://github.com/nickjj/docker-rails-example]
• Developer of this site: Mark Hladkov (web developer) | Telegram

Developed this project as my Rails pet-project with Docker.

In order to demonstrate my knowledge of web application development.

Such as: server-side (databases + SQL (ORM) DDL & DML, business logic, API, authorization, unit testing and other debugging tools, Docker, Git) and front-end JavaScript, AJAX or fetch, Tailwind CSS, dynamic pages without reloading (turbo frames), WYSIWYG Trix editor to create and edit posts with attachments, responsive page layout (HTML Responsive Web Design), page paganation, seach by title or selected categories and etc.)

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Gallery of photos