My collection of Ruby gems 💎

Typed Attributes: Runtime checked typed Attributes (based on ActiveModel)
VC: View Components for Rails
- Example Component
- Testing a Component
What is next?
Are you interested?

I have a number of gems released (or planned to be).

This page shows the collection of Ruby gems, including examples of usage.

`Typed Attributes`: Runtime checked typed Attributes (based on `ActiveModel`)

Define instance attribute accessors with expected data type information, default values and coercion:

attr_string :tag, default: "div", convert: true
attr_string :label, allow_nil: false
attr_symbol :variant, default: :contained, in: [:contained, :raised, :outlined, :text]
attr_array :scores, sub_type: Numeric, convert: true

`VC`: View Components for Rails

Sound familiar? In 2018, before the release of Joel Hawksley’s view_component I built my own ViewComponent implementation. Over the course of the next 2 years it evolved and grew to be very feature complete.

While I now highly recommend view_component you might be interested to compare with what I have here.

Renamed as VC: encapsulating views into testable, reusable entities that play nicely with the Rail additionally with:

attributes or ‘props’ of views can be validated and have their types checked
DSL is provided for working with Stimulus
RSpec shared examples and support for fuzz testing view components
play nicely with the Rails Russian doll view caching mechanism

Example Component

class Avatar < ::VC
  auto_cache(true)
  
  attr_string :image_url
  attr_string :initials

  validates_length_of :initials, minimum: 1, maximum: 3, allow_blank: true

  attr_symbol :shape, in: [:circle, :square], default: :circle
  attr_symbol :size, in: [:tiny, :small, :medium, :large, :extra_large], default: :medium

  def element_classes
    [
      "vc-avatar",
      "vc-avatar--#{shape}",
      "vc-avatar--#{shape}--#{size}"
    ]
  end
end

<%= view_component_tag component do %>
  <% if component.image_url? %>
    <%= image_tag component.image_url %>
  <% else %>
    <p><%= component.initials %></p>
  <% end %>
<% end %>

Testing a Component

RSpec.describe ::Avatar, type: :view do
  # Check each parameter combination
  it_behaves_like(
    "a view component",
    attributes: {
      image_url: {
        valid: ["https://cataas.com/cat/says/hello", nil],
        invalid: ["not_a_valid_asset"]
      },
      initialsZ: {
        valid: ["A", "AB", "A B"],
        invalid: ["AB C", 123]
      }
    },
  )

  # Checks the specific component instance will render
  it_behaves_like(
    "a rendered view component",
    component: described_class.new(initials: "A B", url: "http://image_url"),
    content_to_match: %r{src="http:\/\/image_url},
  )

  # More custom render tests
  describe "#render" do
    it "does not render successfully with invalid initials length" do
      expect {
        described_class.new(initials: "AB C").render(view_context: view)
      }.to raise_error ActiveModel::ValidationError
    end
  end
end

What is next?

For each of these gems I plan to write a post about them and discuss how they might be useful while they compare to alternatives out there.

I also plan to do some deep dives into the how’s and whys of some of the limitations for both these gems and alternatives.

Are you interested?

Interested in anything you read about above and want to be kept in the loop?
Want to read articles about Ruby & gems?
Want to learn about working as a freelancer or in a collective in tech?

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