How to Use Hotwire Rails: Getting Started Tutorial

Last Updated on December 29, 2023

Introduction

We are back with another exciting and much-talked-about Rails tutorial on how to use Hotwire with the Rails application. This Hotwire Rails tutorial is an alternate method for building modern web applications that consume a pinch of JavaScript.

Rails 7 Hotwire is the default front-end framework shipped with Rails 7 after it was launched. It is used to represent HTML over the wire in the Rails application. Previously, we used to add a hotwire-rails gem in our gem file and then run rails hotwire: install. However, with the introduction of Rails 7, the gem got deprecated. Now, we use turbo-rails and stimulus rails directly, which work as Hotwire’s SPA-like page accelerator and Hotwire’s modest JavaScript framework.

What is Hotwire?

Hotwire is a package of different frameworks that help to build applications. It simplifies the developer’s work for writing web pages without the need to write JavaScript, and instead sending HTML code over the wire.

Introduction to The Hotwire Framework:

1. Turbo:

It uses simplified techniques to build web applications while decreasing the usage of JavaScript in the application. Turbo offers numerous handling methods for the HTML data sent over the wire and displaying the application’s data without actually loading the entire page. It helps to maintain the simplicity of web applications without destroying the single-page application experience by using the below techniques:

Turbo Frames: Turbo Frames help to load the different sections of our markup without any dependency as it divides the page into different contexts separately called frames and updates these frames individually.
Turbo Drive: Every link doesn’t have to make the entire page reload when clicked. Only the HTML contained within the tag will be displayed.
Turbo Streams: To add real-time features to the application, this technique is used. It helps to bring real-time data to the application using CRUD actions.

2. Stimulus

It represents the JavaScript framework, which is required when JS is a requirement in the application. The interaction with the HTML is possible with the help of a stimulus, as the controllers that help those interactions are written by a stimulus.

3. Strada

Not much information is available about Strada as it has not been officially released yet. However, it works with native applications, and by using HTML bridge attributes, interaction is made possible between web applications and native apps.

Simple diagrammatic representation of Hotwire Stack:

Prerequisites For Hotwire Rails Tutorial

As we are implementing the Ruby on Rails Hotwire tutorial, make sure about the following installations before you can get started.

Ruby on Rails
Hotwire gem
PostgreSQL/SQLite (choose any one database)
Turbo Rails
Stimulus.js

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Create a new Rails Project

Find the following commands to create a rails application.

mkdir ~/projects/railshotwire
cd ~/projects/railshotwire
echo "source 'https://rubygems.org'" > Gemfile
echo "gem 'rails', '~> 7.0.0'" >> Gemfile
bundle install  
bundle exec rails new . --force -d=postgresql

Now create some files for the project, up till now no usage of Rails Hotwire can be seen.
Fire the following command in your terminal.

For creating a default controller for the application

echo "class HomeController < ApplicationController" > app/controllers/home_controller.rb
echo "end" >> app/controllers/home_controller.rb

For creating another controller for the application

echo "class OtherController < ApplicationController" > app/controllers/other_controller.rb
echo "end" >> app/controllers/other_controller.rb

For creating routes for the application

echo "Rails.application.routes.draw do" > config/routes.rb
echo '  get "home/index"' >> config/routes.rb
echo '  get "other/index"' >> config/routes.rb
echo '  root to: "home#index"' >> config/routes.rb
echo 'end' >> config/routes.rb

For creating a default view for the application

mkdir app/views/home
echo '<h1>This is Rails Hotwire homepage</h1>' > app/views/home/index.html.erb
echo '<div><%= link_to "Enter to other page", other_index_path %></div>' >> app/views/home/index.html.erb

For creating another view for the application

mkdir app/views/other
echo '<h1>This is Another page</h1>' > app/views/other/index.html.erb
echo '<div><%= link_to "Enter to home page", root_path %></div>' >> app/views/other/index.html.erb

For creating a database and schema.rb file for the application

bin/rails db:create
bin/rails db:migrate

For checking the application run bin/rails s and open your browser, your running application will have the below view.

Additionally, you can clone the code and browse through the project. Here’s the source code of the repository: Rails 7 Hotwire application

Now, let’s see how Hotwire Rails can work its magic with various Turbo techniques.

Hotwire Rails: Turbo Drive

Go to your localhost:3000 on your web browser and right-click on the Inspect and open a Network tab of the DevTools of the browser.

Now click on go to another page link that appears on the home page to redirect from the home page to another page. In our Network tab, we can see that this action of navigation is achieved via XHR. It appears only the part inside HTML is reloaded, here neither the CSS is reloaded nor the JS is reloaded when the navigation action is performed.

By performing this action we can see that Turbo Drive helps to represent the HTML response without loading the full page and only follows redirect and reindeer HTML responses which helps to make the application faster to access.

Hotwire Rails: Turbo Frame

This technique helps to divide the current page into different sections called frames that can be updated separately independently when new data is added from the server.
Below we discuss the different use cases of Turbo frame like inline edition, sorting, searching, and filtering of data.

Let’s perform some practical actions to see the example of these use cases.

Make changes in the app/controllers/home_controller.rb file

#CODE

class HomeController < ApplicationController
   def turbo_frame_form
   end
   
   def turbo_frame_submit
      extracted_anynumber = params[:any][:anynumber]
      render :turbo_frame_form, status: :ok, locals: {anynumber: extracted_anynumber,      comment: 'turbo_frame_submit ok' }
   end
end

Add app/views/home/turbo_frame_form.html.erb file to the application and add this content inside the file.

#CODE

<section>

    <%= turbo_frame_tag 'anyframe' do %>
            
      <div>
          <h2>Frame view</h2>
          <%= form_with scope: :any, url: turbo_frame_submit_path, local: true do |form| %>
              <%= form.label :anynumber, 'Type an integer (odd or even)', 'class' => 'my-0  d-inline'  %>
              <%= form.text_field :anynumber, type: 'number', 'required' => 'true', 'value' => "#{local_assigns[:anynumber] || 0}",  'aria-describedby' => 'anynumber' %>
              <%= form.submit 'Submit this number', 'id' => 'submit-number' %>
          <% end %>
      </div>
      <div>
        <h2>Data of the view</h2>
        <pre style="font-size: .7rem;"><%= JSON.pretty_generate(local_assigns) %></pre> 
      </div>
      
    <% end %>

</section>

Make some adjustments in routes.rb

#CODE

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  get 'home/index'
  get 'other/index'

  get '/home/turbo_frame_form' => 'home#turbo_frame_form', as: 'turbo_frame_form'
  post '/home/turbo_frame_submit' => 'home#turbo_frame_submit', as: 'turbo_frame_submit'


  root to: "home#index"
end

Next step is to change homepage view in app/views/home/index.html.erb

#CODE

<h1>This is Rails Hotwire home page</h1>
<div><%= link_to "Enter to other page", other_index_path %></div>

<%= turbo_frame_tag 'anyframe' do %>        
  <div>
      <h2>Home view</h2>
      <%= form_with scope: :any, url: turbo_frame_submit_path, local: true do |form| %>
          <%= form.label :anynumber, 'Type an integer (odd or even)', 'class' => 'my-0  d-inline'  %>
          <%= form.text_field :anynumber, type: 'number', 'required' => 'true', 'value' => "#{local_assigns[:anynumber] || 0}",  'aria-describedby' => 'anynumber' %>
          <%= form.submit 'Submit this number', 'id' => 'submit-number' %>
      <% end %>
  <div>
<% end %>

After making all the changes, restart the rails server and refresh the browser, the default view will appear on the browser.

Now in the field enter any digit, after entering the digit click on submit button, and as the submit button is clicked we can see the Turbo Frame in action in the below screen, we can observe that the frame part changed, the first title and first link didn’t move.

Hotwire Rails: Turbo Streams

Turbo Streams deliver page updates over WebSocket, SSE or in response to form submissions by only using HTML and a series of CRUD-like operations, you are free to say that either

Update the piece of HTML while responding to all the other actions like the post, put, patch, and delete except the GET action.
Transmit a change to all users, without reloading the browser page.

This transmit can be represented by a simple example.

Make changes in app/controllers/other_controller.rb file of rails application

#CODE

class OtherController < ApplicationController

  def post_something
    respond_to do |format|
      format.turbo_stream {  }
    end
  end

   end

Add the below line in routes.rb file of the application

#CODE

post '/other/post_something' => 'other#post_something', as: 'post_something'

Superb! Rails will now attempt to locate the app/views/other/post_something.turbo_stream.erb template at any moment the ‘/other/post_something’ endpoint is reached.

For this, we need to add app/views/other/post_something.turbo_stream.erb template in the rails application.

#CODE

<turbo-stream action="append" target="messages">
  <template>
    <div id="message_1">This changes the existing message!</div>
  </template>
</turbo-stream>

This states that the response will try to append the template of the turbo frame with ID “messages”.

Now change the index.html.erb file in app/views/other paths with the below content.

#CODE

<h1>This is Another page</h1>
<div><%= link_to "Enter to home page", root_path %></div>

<div style="margin-top: 3rem;">
  <%= form_with scope: :any, url: post_something_path do |form| %>
      <%= form.submit 'Post any message' %>
  <% end %>
  <turbo-frame id="messages">
    <div>An empty message</div>
  </turbo-frame>
</div>

After making all the changes, restart the rails server and refresh the browser, and go to the other page.

Once the above screen appears, click on the Post any message button

This action shows that after submitting the response, the Turbo Streams help the developer to append the message, without reloading the page.

Another use case we can test is that rather than appending the message, the developer replaces the message. For that, we need to change the content of app/views/other/post_something.turbo_stream.erb template file and change the value of the action attribute from append to replace and check the changes in the browser.

#CODE

<turbo-stream action="replace" target="messages">
  <template>
    <div id="message_1">This changes the existing message!</div>
  </template>
</turbo-stream>

change the value of the action attribute

When we click on Post any message button, the message that appear below that button will get replaced with the message that is mentioned in the app/views/other/post_something.turbo_stream.erb template

Stimulus

There are some cases in an application where JS is needed, therefore to cover those scenarios we require Hotwire JS tool. Hotwire has a JS tool because in some scenarios Turbo-* tools are not sufficient. But as we know that Hotwire is used to reduce the usage of JS in an application, Stimulus considers HTML as the single source of truth. Consider the case where we have to give elements on a page some JavaScript attributes, such as data controller, data-action, and data target. For that, a stimulus controller that can access elements and receive events based on those characteristics will be created.

Make a change in app/views/other/index.html.erb template file in rails application

#CODE

<h1>This is Another page</h1>
<div><%= link_to "Enter to home page", root_path %></div>

<div style="margin-top: 2rem;">
  <%= form_with scope: :any, url: post_something_path do |form| %>
      <%= form.submit 'Post something' %>
  <% end %>
  <turbo-frame id="messages">
    <div>An empty message</div>
  </turbo-frame>
</div>

<div style="margin-top: 2rem;">
  <h2>Stimulus</h2>  
  <div data-controller="hello">
    <input data-hello-target="name" type="text">
    <button data-action="click->hello#greet">
      Greet
    </button>
    <span data-hello-target="output">
    </span>
  </div>
</div>

Make changes in the hello_controller.js in path app/JavaScript/controllers and add a stimulus controller in the file, which helps to bring the HTML into life.

#CODE

import { Controller } from "@hotwired/stimulus"

export default class extends Controller {
  static targets = [ "name", "output" ]

  greet() {
    this.outputTarget.textContent =
      `Hello, ${this.nameTarget.value}!`
  }
}

Go to your browser after making the changes in the code and click on Enter to other page link which will navigate to the localhost:3000/other/index page there you can see the changes implemented by the stimulus controller that is designed to augment your HTML with just enough behavior to make it more responsive.

With just a little bit of work, Turbo and Stimulus together offer a complete answer for applications that are quick and compelling.

Using Rails 7 Hotwire helps to load the pages at a faster speed and allows you to render templates on the server, where you have access to your whole domain model. It is a productive development experience in ROR, without compromising any of the speed or responsiveness associated with SPA.

Conclusion

We hope you were satisfied with our Rails Hotwire tutorial. Write to us at [email protected] for any query that you want to resolve, or if you want us to share a tutorial on your query.

For more such solutions on RoR, check out our Ruby on Rails Tutorials. We will always strive to amaze you and cater to your needs.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the benefits of Hotwire Rails?

The biggest advantage of Hotwire Rails is that it makes things easy and superfast.

Is the gem hotwire-rails deprecated?

Yes, the above gem is deprecated. However, you can use these two gems instead for the same: turbo-rails and stimulus-rails.

How can we use Hotwire in Rails Applications for creating Dynamic Forms.

Hotwire makes it simple to implement dynamic forms without the need for custom logic to toggle front-end fields because it makes use of both Stimulus and Turbo Stream

Experience Faster Web Development with Hotwire Rails

Experience instantly extend applications with fully-managed services that allows for faster web development by eliminating the need for full page reloads during interactions with the server, resulting in a more seamless and responsive user experience.

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