CableReady Everywhere
One thing you'll find yourself doing when working with CableReady is rendering HTML in places you might not previously have done so.
It's possible to use Rails for a while before you realize that the
render method might be useful for more than just partials. Perhaps you need to render some JSON or a text string in your controller, but sooner or later you become aware that Rails is calling render for you at the end of most Rails controller actions.You can call
render from almost anywhere, using ApplicationController.render... which just is long enough to get annoying if you type it a lot.Experience has taught us that shorter calls lead to code that is easier to read and reason about, so we often delegate the
render method to ApplicationController so that we don't have to type "ApplicationController" over and over.In the sections below, you'll learn how to configure
ApplicationController, ApplicationRecord and ApplicationJob so that they make working with CableReady a breeze.First, we recommend that you include CableReady in your
ApplicationController:app/controllers/application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
include CableReady::Broadcaster
end
Controller actions that handle Ajax requests, as well as web hooks and OAuth endpoints are great places to call CableReady. It's also common to broadcast CableReady operations to groups of users and/or resources inside controller actions.
If you perform a CableReady broadcast during a standard page controller action, it will send the broadcast immediately; before the action has completed, before the view template has been rendered and before the HTML has been sent to the client. This can lead to developers becoming convinced (incorrectly) that the broadcast did not work.
If you need the user executing the controller action to see the broadcast, you should use an ActiveJob that has been delayed for a few seconds using the set method. There's also a good example of using Stimulus to provide an elegant solution to group update issues.
Fans of Hotwire Turbo Streams will be excited to know that it is easy to use CableReady with standard Rails controller actions. Here's how to do it:
<%= link_to "Console message", "users/#{current_user.id}/message", method: :patch %>
config/routes.rb
patch 'users/:id/message', to: 'users#message', constraints: lambda { |request| request.xhr? }
app/controllers/users_controller.rb
class UsersController < ApplicationController
def message
cable_ready[UsersChannel].console_log(message: "Hi!").broadcast_to(current_user)
head :ok
end
end
Not too shabby, right?
Make sure that
CableReady::Broadcaster is included in your ApplicationJob, and delegate render to ApplicationController:app/jobs/application_job.rb
class ApplicationJob < ActiveJob::Base
include CableReady::Broadcaster
delegate :render, to: :ApplicationController
end
Here's a genuinely contrived example of using a Job to drive CableReady:
app/views/home/index.html.erb
What could possibly happen?<br>
<div id="content"></div>
app/controllers/home_controller.rb
class HomeController < ApplicationController
def index
ExampleJob.set(wait: 5.seconds).perform_later current_user.id
end
end
If anyone starts lecturing you about the urgent and unquestionable need for the separation of business logic from presentation, tell them that you have work to do.
app/jobs/example_job.rb
class ExampleJob < ApplicationJob
include CableReady::Broadcaster
queue_as :default
def perform(user_id)
user = User.find(user_id)
cable_ready[UsersChannel].inner_html(
selector: "#content",
html: "Hello World this is the background job."
).broadcast_to(user)
end
end
Make sure that
CableReady::Broadcaster is included in your ApplicationRecord, and delegate render to ApplicationController:app/models/application_record.rb
class ApplicationRecord < ActiveRecord::Base
self.abstract_class = true
include CableReady::Broadcaster
delegate :render, to: :ApplicationController
def sgid
to_sgid(expires_in: nil).to_s
end
end
We also recommend that you add a
sgid method to your models, to make it easier to work with Secure Global IDs when handling broadcasting to resources. By default, Rails uses the current time to set sgids to expire after a month by default. This means that every time you'd run to_sgid, you would get a different result, which is not useful for our purposes - we need repeatable values.Some people love them, and some people hate them. Regardless of your feelings about model callbacks, it's hard to ignore how CableReady dances inside of an ActiveRecord callback:
class Post < ApplicationRecord
after_update do
cable_ready[PostsChannel].morph(
selector: dom_id(self),
html: render(self)
).broadcast_to(self)
end
end
If things aren't quite so straight-forward with your partial rendering, you can still do this:
class Post < ApplicationRecord
after_update do
cable_ready[PostsChannel].morph(
selector: dom_id(self),
html: render(partial: "navbar/posts", locals: { post: self })
).broadcast_to(self)
end
end
If the location of your partial needs to be dynamic based on the context, you can re-assign it:
class Post < ApplicationRecord
after_update do
cable_ready[PostsChannel].morph(
selector: dom_id(self),
html: render(self)
).broadcast_to(self)
end
def to_partial_path
"navbar/posts"
end
end
All excitement aside, we'd still recommend using those callbacks to queue up ActiveJobs instead of calling CableReady directly. But hey... the more you know, right?
app/models/post.rb
state_machine initial: :pending do
event :accept do
transition [:pending] => :active
end
after_transition on: :accept do |post|
cable_ready[PostsChannel].morph(
selector: dom_id(post),
html: render(post)
).broadcast_to(post)
end
end
Make sure that
CableReady::Broadcaster is included in your ApplicationCable, and delegate render to ApplicationController:app/channels/application_cable/channel.rb
module ApplicationCable
class Channel < ActionCable::Channel::Base
include CableReady::Broadcaster
delegate :render, to: :ApplicationController
end
end
In a new twist, let's empower this channel to receive data from the clients:
app/channels/sailors_channel.rb
class SailorsChannel < ApplicationCable::Channel
def subscribed
stream_from "sailors"
end
def receive(data)
cable_ready["sailors"].console_log(message: "A sailor yells: #{data}").broadcast
end
end
This controller can send text back up to the server when the
greet method is fired:app/javascript/controllers/sailors_controller.js
import { Controller } from 'stimulus'
import CableReady from 'cable_ready'
export default class extends Controller {
connect () {
this.channel = this.application.consumer.subscriptions.create('SailorsChannel', {
received (data) {
if (data.cableReady) CableReady.perform(data.operations)
}
})
}
greet (event) {
this.channel.send(event.target.value)
}
disconnect () {
this.channel.unsubscribe()
}
}
Finally, let's wire up the input element's change event to the
greet method:index.html.erb
<input type="text" data-controller="sailors" data-action="change->sailors#greet">
StimulusReflex users must not include
CableReady::Broadcaster in their Reflex classes, as it makes special versions of the CableReady methods available.If you would like to read more about using StimulusReflex with CableReady, please consult "Using CableReady inside a Reflex action".
Last modified 1yr ago