sprockets VS turbo

Have you noticed that we used JSX syntax? It is not what the browser understands by default. In Rails, the Sprockets gem is responsible for translating from the languages that developers like to write to the languages that the browser can run. However, it doesn't compile JSX by default. You can learn from the Sprockets fascinating readme on how to befriend it with new file types, but for JSX it is already done by the creator of the jass-react-jsx gem. Therefore, there is no reason to write the code again that is already written and working. It uses Babel, a JavaScript library that converts one JavaScript to another. It requires Node.js to run. I can't imagine a case where you have a Rails app installed but Node.js isn't, but the fact that I can't imagine it doesn't mean that it's impossible. So lets add babel to our app: Console

Sprockets actually does define those tasks: https://github.com/rails/sprockets/blob/main/lib/rake/sprocketstask.rb

What an exciting couple of months it has been for the Rails community! Rails 7 was released in December of 2021 and this month we are welcoming Propshaft. David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the creator of Rails, released a post on Feb. 11 introducing the community to the new and improved asset pipeline for Rails. While Propshaft likely won't be the default until at least Rails 8, it promises a simpler solution to asset management over its predecessor, Sprockets. Sprockets, the current default asset pipeline library, has grown increasingly heavy over the years as it has attempted to shoulder all things related to bundling, minifying, transpiling, and compressing. Enabled by the new era of tech that makes Rails 7 possible, Propshaft is touted as being "absolutely tiny" in comparison and aims to provide the following: a configurable load path for your assets, digest stamping for long-expiry cache and better performance, a development server that removes the need to pre-compile assets, and basic compilers instead of full transpilers. Sprockets will require relatively long-term support and will remain the default for now but fret not! You can create a Rails 7+ app using Propshaft, or upgrade an existing app and start using it now.

after being in beta for 3 years, Sprockets 4 was released, with support for ES6 and source maps in the asset pipeline (2019), to serve people still hesitant with webpack,

I also recommend checking out the docs for Stimulus and Turbo to familiarise yourself with all their features and the APIs used in this series.

https://github.com/hotwired/turbo

Turbo 8 remove typescript without using JSDOC

Experiment using Turbo to drive front-end behavior: "Turbo 7.2.0 (currently in beta) allows you to define your own Stream actions which can be any JS code you want. By combining a custom Stream action or two with web components, you can essentially drive reactive frontend behavior from the backend stupidly easily. Loooove it! 😍 […] For a turnkey example, you could check out https://github.com/hopsoft/turbo_ready " —Jared White on The Spicy Web Discord

This handles disconnection (as could be done by any destructive change to the DOM, like navigating with Turbo or htmx, I'm not even talking about using the element in a JavaScript-heavy web app) but not reconnection though, and we've exited early from the connectedCallback to avoid initializing the element twice, so this change actually broke our component in these situations where it's moved around, or stashed and then reinserted. To fix that, we need to always call addSparkles in connectedCallback, so move all the rest into an if, that's actually as simple as that… except that when the user prefers reduced motion, sparkles are never removed, so they keep piling in each time the element is connected again. One way to handle that, without introducing our housekeeping of individual timers, is to just remove all sparkles on disconnection. Either that or conditionally add them in connectedCallback if either we're initializing the element (including attaching the shadow DOM) or the user doesn't prefer reduced motion. The difference between both approaches is in whether we want the small animation when the sparkles appear (and appearing at new random locations). I went with the latter.

If you think you have seen enough Rails magic, you are mistaken my friend. Rails have a new trick up its sleeve: Hotwire. And with the magical Turbo tool that comes with it, you can create modern, interactive web applications with minimal, or sometimes no JavaScript at all, providing users with an incredibly smooth experience.

There is also Turbo and the frameworks who adopt them, Ruby on Rails, PHP Symphony and possibly others that solves the same issue in the same manner as HTMX. And the choice for HTMX is only a personal taste in this, but you should definitely learn about this, this is as cool as HTMX!

Most controversially, the Turbo framework dropped TypeScript support altogether after assessing that strong typing was the culprit behind poor developer experience.

Turbo[0] has been solving this for years. Quite the contrary, front-end frameworks have started to think "sending JSON is good, but actually sending HTML could be great!".

DHH's presentation[1] during Rails World 2023 is quite interesting in that regard, I recommend you give it a go (start around minute 16). I am actually very excited with his vision of the web.

[0] https://turbo.hotwired.dev/