DFE-Digital/rails-template is a Rails application template that makes starting a new GOV.UK Rails project fast and fun.

• GOV.UK Frontend
• GOV.UK Components
• GOV.UK Form Builder
• RSpec
• Production/PaaS/Terraform ready Dockerfile
• (optional) Architecture decision record support
• (optional) GOV.UK styled error pages
• (optional) asdf versioning
• (optional) solargraph with bundled gem support and annotate
• (optional) Linting with rubocop-govuk, formatting with prettier/plugin-ruby

• 🆕 Ruby 3, Rails 7, and the template does not require us to manually merge dependabot PRs or to keep Ruby/Rails up to date; that's handled by rails new!
• 🆕 rails/propshaft asset pipeline
• 🆕 cssbundling / jsbundling with dart-sass and esbuild, no more Webpack!
• 🆕 Importing improvements from the template

• Rails 7.0.x
• Ruby 3.1.1
• NodeJS 18.x
• Yarn 1.22.x
• Foreman
• Postgres 13.x

To create a new application called apply-for-a-juggling-licence:

rails new \
  --force \
  --database=postgresql \
  --skip-bundle \
  --skip-git \
  --skip-jbuilder \
  --skip-hotwire \
  --skip-action-mailbox \
  --skip-action-mailer \
  --skip-action-text \
  --asset-pipeline=propshaft \
  --javascript=esbuild \
  --css=sass \
  -m https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DFE-Digital/rails-template/main/template.rb \
  apply-for-a-juggling-licence

The installer will ask you to confirm y/N if you want any optional features.

Once the project is set up, tidy up the README, it should already contain some references to helpful things like ADRs/linting if you opted into them.

# Make sure Postgres is running
cd apply-for-a-juggling-licence
asdf install           # Install Ruby/Node/other tools, see README
bin/setup              # Install gems, create databases, remove old logs
bin/dev                # Run the application in development mode using foreman
open http://localhost:3000

# Production
bin/rails db:create RAILS_ENV=production # Prepare database
docker build .                           # Build docker container
docker run --net=host \
  -e RAILS_ENV=production \
  -e RAILS_SERVE_STATIC_FILES=true \
  -e SECRET_KEY_BASE=local \
  <DOCKER_IMAGE_ID_FROM_BUILD_COMMAND>
open http://localhost:3000

We might make changes to the template to improve how things work, or add new features. We've tried to make it easy to benefit from these changes.

To apply the template to an existing project, run this from inside your project:

bin/rails app:template LOCATION=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DFE-Digital/rails-template/main/template.rb

The script will ask to overwrite diverging files; press the d key to see the diffs for each file, and choose accordingly. You might have to make some changes yourself if you've overriden certain files, like the layout.