This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Rob Race
Why in the browser?
While doing some research and working on some details for my new book Realtime Rails, I came across an issue where making changes to ActiveRecord objects in the terminal's rails console were not showing up in the web browser. When working in development, based on default settings for ActionCable and the Rails server, for the broadcast to show up, it needs to be using the same process, instead of the seperate process spaned by the rails console in terminal.
Also, having the console show up in the browser on demand is a pretty cool setup. You can see the changes in real-time and interact with the objects in the browser.
How to set it up
Tip
If you have a recent version of Rails, this gem should already be included, as Rails has been adding theweb-consolegem to the default Gemfile for a while now to show the console in the browser on exception pages.
If you need set up the Rails console in the browser yourself instead, you will need to add the web-console gem to your Gemfile:
gem 'web-console', group: :development
Then, run bundle install to install the gem.
Once that is installed, you can add a web console to any view file by adding <%= console %>, and then you can interact with the Rails console in the browser.
Taking it a step further
If you want to add some vonvenicne to this process, lke me, you can add route, controller and view (that are development only) to have the browser show up in the browser on a specific page in your application.
First adding the development only route:
if Rails.env.development?
get '/console', to: 'console#show'
end
Then, create the controller:
class ConsoleController < ApplicationController
def show
end
end
And finally, the view:
<h1>Rails Console</h1>
<%= console %>
Now, when you visit /console in your development environment, you will have a console in the browser.
Alternate Idea
Another idea is to add a link to the console in the footer of your application. This way, you can easily access the console from any page in your application.
Note
Web Console has CSS to make it sticky to the bottom of the page, so it will always be visible. There is no extra CSS to add when you want to add to any existing pages in your application.
Then, add the link to the console in your application.html.erb layout file but since we're not relying on the route to show the console in development environment only, we will need to add a conditional check in the template:
<% if Rails.env.development? %>
<%= console %>
<% end %>
Personally, I'd rather have the console show up on a specific page, but this is a good alternative if you want to have the console available on every page in your application.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Rob Race
Rob Race | Sciencx (2024-09-26T18:09:45+00:00) Rails Console in the Browser (on-demand). Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2024/09/26/rails-console-in-the-browser-on-demand/
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