Getting started with Rails, Tests, Continuous Integration & Deployment

So you are about to start building your awesome web application. If you are reading this article, you are probably curious about the awesomeness of the Ruby on Rails framework. Good for you!

Let me take a moment and tell you about why Ruby on Rails is popular with the startup community.

For starters let me point you to Airbnb, Twitter, Groupon, Indiegogo, SoundCloud, Zendesk and GitHub. All these great services ware built and ran on Ruby on Rails. Some of them, like Twitter, have since moved on to other stacks, but it was Rails that carried these startups from an idea to a fully featured service used by millions of users and funded by investors.

It is the nature of the Ruby on Rails framework to change and evolve rapidly and as an entrepreneur you need to stay up to date with the web and new technologies. Facing continued change and development suits the very essence of a startup.

If you’re new to Ruby on Rails, one of the most daunting aspects is knowing what’s the preferred way of accomplishing a given task. There are hundreds of coding practices or techniques that can make your life as a Ruby on Rails developer easier.

In this article I will focus on how to set up a Rails 5.x application with some common frameworks for testing, test coverage metrics, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment.

It is well outside the scope of this article to explain the benefits of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. If you’re intrigued, start here and keep reading.

Otherwise, here we goooooo….

Step-by-step to a scaffolded Rails app with Postgres, Travis, Coveralls and Heroku

Create repo on GitHub.

On your GH account crate a new public repository and include Rails .gitignore and optional README.

Copy path to repo.

Clone to your local machine.

git clone REPO_PATH locally where you want your project to live.

Create a new Rails app.

In this setup we will use Postgres in order to be able to deploy to Heroku. We will also skip test because we’re going to use Cucumber and RSpec instead of Minitest and skip the bundle for now because we’re going to add a bunch of gems. We will use a variant of the newcommand that adds a . . This creates the app in the current folder and uses the folder name as application name.

Run rails new . --database=postgresql --skip-test --skip-bundle in your terminal

Say n to overwrite .gitignore (and README)

Setup a branch structure

Switch to a development branch so you can keep your master branch clean. (We'll populate it later as we accept code into our production copy).

Run git checkout -b develop in your terminal

Sync with GH

Stage your new files for version control: git add .

Make your first commit:

git commit -m 'scaffolds new rails application'

You can also push to your remote repo on GitHub at this stage:

git push origin develop

Clean up code

In Gemfile you will find a lot of gems added by the framework. Most of them are useful and important byt there's also a lot of content we don't need.

Delete comments and everything in :development, :test group. Only delete the Windows gem at the bottom of Gemfile if you're not working in Windows

Your Gemfile should look something like this:

source 'https://rubygems.org'
 
 git_source(:github) do |repo_name|
   repo_name = "#{repo_name}/#{repo_name}" unless repo_name.include?("/")
   "https://github.com/#{repo_name}.git"
 end
 
 
 gem 'rails', '~> 5.1.1'
 gem 'pg', '~> 0.18'
 gem 'puma', '~> 3.7'
 gem 'sass-rails', '~> 5.0'
 gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.3.0'
 gem 'turbolinks', '~> 5'
 gem 'jbuilder', '~> 2.5'
 
 group :development, :test do
 end
 
 group :development do
   gem 'web-console', '>= 3.3.0'
   gem 'listen', '>= 3.0.5', '< 3.2'
   gem 'spring'
   gem 'spring-watcher-listen', '~> 2.0.0'
 end

Adding dependencies

Add the following gems to your Gemfile:

```ruby
group :development, :test do
  gem 'rspec-rails'
  gem 'shoulda-matchers'
  gem 'factory_girl_rails'
  gem 'pry'
  gem 'pry-byebug'
  gem 'cucumber-rails', require: false
  gem 'database_cleaner'
  gem 'coveralls', require: false
end
```

Gem descriptions

• Rspec Unit testing
• Shoulda Matchers Testing matchers for Rspec
• Factory GirlEasy creation of new table entries
• Pry Debugging
• Pry-Byebug Allows you to step through debugger
• Cucumber Acceptance testing framework
• DatabaseCleaner Wipes the database after tests
• Coveralls Integration with Coveralls service for test metrics

More cleaning

In config/application.rb remove comments and inside class Application add:

config.generators do |generate|
  generate.helper false
  generate.assets false
  generate.view_specs false
  generate.helper_specs false
  generate.routing_specs false
  generate.controller_specs false
end

Also, search for the following comment and setting and remove it:

# Don't generate system test files.
config.generators.system_tests = nil

Here we’re turning off a bunch of auto-generators for things we’ll be creating while we build the app. We’ve turned them all off, but we might want to leave some on if our project is complex or if we are going to have a lot of helpers, etc.

Install dependencies

Run bundle install. That installs any missing gems and creates your Gemfile.lock to reference them.

Create your database

Run the following commands to create your database and prepare it for use.

rails db:create
rails db:migrate

Install and configure testing frameworks

Install Rspec (for unit testing) with:

bundle exec rails generate rspec:install

Configure the terminal output to show test messages rather than green or red dots when RSpec run: In the hidden file .rspec, add: --format documentation

Run bundle exec rspec. This should work now and return no errors (and also no tests, because you haven't written any)

Install Cucumber (for acceptance testing) with:

bundle exec rails g cucumber:install

Run bundle exec cucumber. This should not error and find no examples

More cleaning — again

Remove unnecessary comments from rails_helper and spec_helper.

In rails_helper, inside the RSpec.configure block add DatabaseCleaner bits:

config.before(:suite) do
  DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :transaction
  DatabaseCleaner.clean_with(:truncation)
end
config.around(:each) do |example|
  DatabaseCleaner.cleaning do
    example.run
  end
end

Again in rails_helper, this time outside the RSpec.configure block, add ShouldaMatchers configuration:

Shoulda::Matchers.configure do |config|
  config.integrate do |with|
    with.test_framework :rspec
    with.library :rails
  end
end

(Optional) Create pull request template for Github:

• mkdir .github
• touch .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md

Add :

PT Story: [paste Pivotal Tracker link here]
Changes proposed in this pull request:
[item 1 - replace me]
[item 2 - replace me]
What I have learned working on this feature: [If you don't put anything here you are doing it wrong!]
Screenshots: [If you made some visual changes to the application please upload screenshots here, or remove this section]

Continuous Integration

Bump over to Travis to setup Continuous Integration.

Visit Travis-ci.org:

• Sign up or whatever you have to do.
• Hit the little + next to My Repositories
• Flip the switch on the repository you just created

Create a file in the root of your folder called .travis.yml. Add:

language: ruby
rvm:
  - 2.4.0
before_script:
  - bundle exec rake db:create --all
  - bundle exec rake db:migrate
script:
  - bundle exec rake ci:tests
services:
  - postgresql
notifications:
  email: false

(Obviously, if you are using a different version of Ruby, you will put that version under rvm. And if you want a thousand emails about your builds passing or failing, don't include the last two lines.)

Code Coverage

Create lib/tasks/ci.rake. We'll create a task to merge all test information and send it to coveralls. Add:

unless Rails.env.production?
    require 'rspec/core/rake_task'
    require 'cucumber/rake/task'
    require 'coveralls/rake/task'
    Coveralls::RakeTask.new
    namespace :ci do
      desc 'Run all tests and generate a merged coverage report'
      task tests: [:spec, :cucumber, 'coveralls:push']
    end
  end

Create a file named .simplecov in root folder to bundle test coverage.

Add:

SimpleCov.start 'rails'

Visit coveralls.io:

• Sign up or login to your existing account.
• Hit the plus sign, then flip the switch on your new repo. (You probably have to refresh to see it.)

At the very top of spec_helper add the following code:

require 'coveralls'
Coveralls.wear!

Delete comments and add the following to /features/support/env.rb:

require 'coveralls'
Coveralls.wear_merged!("rails")

These four lines of code will generate code coverage reports for Coveralls. Access them on the Coveralls website.

• Add /coverage to .gitignore

The rake command will run both rspec and cucumber. This should pass with no errors but also with no examples (you have not added any tests yet…)

Continuous Deployment

If you haven’t before, you’ll need to install the Heroku Toolbelt, create an account on Heroku and heroku login with those credentials.

Now run heroku create APP_NAME twice - once for a development server, once for a production server. (If you fail to specify an app name, Heroku will make one for you).

The next step is to configure Travis to push to your Heroku servers when code is pushed to integrated by the service. Of course, Travis will not only deploy code directly pushed to your GitHub branches but also code merged in using Pull Requests.

You need to obtain your secure Heroku key and encrypt it. If you’ve never used Travis before, you’ll have to istall the gem by running gem install travis in your terminal.

You can now ask Travis to make the necessary modifications to your .travis.yml file:

travis encrypt $(heroku auth:token) --add deploy.api_key

If that fails for you, grab your Heroku key manually with heroku auth:token, copy it, and run: travis encrypt YOUR_HEROKU_KEY.

Open up your .travis.yml file and add:

deploy:
  provider: heroku
  api_key:
    secure: YOUR_SECURE_KEY
  app:
    develop: YOUR_DEVELOPMENT_APP
    master: YOUR_PRODUCTION_APP
  on:
    repo: YOUR_GITHUB_REPO
  run:
    - "rails db:migrate"

Format your repo like this: YOUR_GITHUB_NAME/PROJECT_REPO. This setup will deploy your application after a successful build at develop or master.

That’s about it. You now have a basic scaffold application and are ready to build some awesome shit! Work smart, stick to the outside-in testing process and have fun!

Happy coding — Peace out!

This article is based on a section of our course materials used in Craft Academy 12 week bootcamp.

Craft Academy is a Tech Education Provider that aims to bring new talent to the market and help to solve the shortage of tech workers. We are founded on the belief that modern development standards, agile methodologies and business skills are fundamental for ITC professionals. Our primary service is a 12-week coding bootcamp designed to provide individuals with a foundation of skills that allows them to enter the industry as junior developers.

With that foundation, our learners find employment in various industries or start their own businesses that bring new innovations to the market.

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