Brightline, the first new US private passenger railroad in more than a century, is betting it can lure more Floridians out of their cars — but first, it is refinancing roughly $4 billion in debt.

Fortress-Backed Brightline Asks Investors to Bet on Florida Rail

Much has changed in Mecklenburg County since the Red Line, a commuter rail between Uptown and Lake Norman, was first envisioned at least a quarter century ago · Why it matters: Even though the train would run on existing tracks, Charlotte Area Transit System must consider all the new development ...

Red Line: Everything to know about north Mecklenburg County's future train - Axios Charlotte

Despite federal backing of bullet train infrastructure in the U.S., a truly high-speed future is unlikely while it remains a partisan issue.

High-Speed Rail Between U.S. Hubs May Be Closer Than It Appears – Commercial Observer

HART CEO Lori Kahikina&#x27;s annual evaluation was quite critical, citing a lack of progress in filling key positions and &quot;limited transparency&quot; with the rail board of directors.

Rail Chief's Lastest Evaluation Raises Questions About Whether She Has A Future With Rail - Honolulu Civil Beat

Questions mostly went unanswered at a public meeting last week. Rider-facing concerns like ticket prices, schedules, and start time are undetermined.

South Coast Rail service appears to be delayed, with a summer start 'unlikely'

BEVERLY, MASS. (WHDH) - Authorities are investigating a crash between a car and a Commuter Rail train in Beverly on Wednesday that sent an elderlyRead More

MBTA: Elderly driver ignored barriers before crash with commuter rail train in Beverly - Boston News, Weather, Sports | WHDH 7News

Almost nothing stops Japan’s famous high-speed bullet trains from running exactly on time – but a tiny snake slithering through a passenger carriage will do the trick, albeit for just 17 minutes.

Snake on a bullet train causes rare railway delay in Japan | CNN

Xcel Energy lines in the North Loop, which provide power to parts of downtown Minneapolis, will need to be moved to make way for the Blue Line light rail extension.

Metro Transit's light rail project encounters new obstacle in Minneapolis’ North Loop: Major utility lines

Deutsche Bahn’s vision includes hi-tech cabins and more efficient engineering work amid growing dissatisfaction with the railway

Efficient, reliable – and fragrant: German rail firm announces plans for the future | Germany | The Guardian

A disabled Amtrak train halted NJ Transit service on the Northeast Corridor due to overhead wire issues.

New Jersey Transit Northeast Corridor service disrupted by overhead wire issue - ABC7 New York

Raiil

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Leveraging Turbo 8: Best Additions to Implement in Rails 8 Projects

The Rails World 2024 conference ended last week, and a lot of new components of the Rails ecosystem were released during it including Kamal 2. I decided to make some preparations for the upcoming changes. In March 2024, the Basecamp team released Thruster, a small, Go-based proxy server for Rails. While the original idea of Thruster was to provide the ability to build production-ready Rails applications from a single container for the ONCE project, it will fit perfectly into the Kamal ecosystem. Isn’t It a Redundancy? Wait? Another proxy server? Why do we need it? Allow me to explain. It doesn’t matter whether we use Traefik with Kamal v1 or Kamal-proxy with Kamal v2; inside the container, we still run Puma (or any other Ruby application server) that serves requests to the application. Besides this, Puma is also responsible for serving application assets – images, stylesheets, JavaScript files, etc. – to the clients. Before Kamal came into the scene, we usually had Nginx in our infrastructure schema. Nginx is a classic web server that can serve static files efficiently. Unfortunately, it is not adapted to container-based setups as you need to manage its configuration via a config file. However, without Nginx, Puma is not the best choice to serve static files. This is where Thruster comes into play. It wraps the Puma instance and efficiently serves static files with X-Sendfile acceleration, while Puma is responsible for the dynamic content. Thruster also provides GZip compression which was available in Traefik via middleware but won’t exist in kamal-proxy. GZip compression plays a crucial role in optimizing web performance by significantly reducing the size of files transmitted between a server and a client. By compressing assets like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, GZIP decreases bandwidth usage and accelerates the loading times of web pages, providing users with a faster, more seamless browsing experience. This not only enhances user satisfaction but also improves search engine rankings, as faster websites tend to rank higher in search results. Additionally, reducing the size of data transfers lightens the load on servers, allowing them to handle more requests efficiently and lowering hosting costs. A reasonable question would be “Why I cannot do a GZIP compression in Rails?” Technically, you can with Rack::Deflater. But since Thruster is already responsible for serving public assets, it can also efficiently handle compression. Besides compression, Thruster also provides basic HTTP caching of public assets and HTTP/2 support. With Thruster, your Rails application can be treated as a black box, which can serve any kind of request efficiently. How to Use Thruster is straightforward to use if you’re already using Puma. First, you need to add Thruster to your Gemfile: # Gemfile

gem 'thruster' Run bundle install, and you are ready to go. Since Thruster is written in Go, the platform-specific binary will be downloaded and installed with the gem. I always create binstubs to have all the necessary commands in one place: $ bundle binstubs thruster By default, Thruster will listen on port 80, while Puma will stay on port 3000. Knowing this, we should update our application Dockerfile accordingly. I assume here that your application is already dockerized. I replaced the port that is getting exposed from 3000 to 80 and added ./bin/thrust to the default command. # Dockerfile

# Entrypoint prepares the database.
ENTRYPOINT ["/rails/bin/docker-entrypoint"]

# Start server via Thruster by default, this can be overwritten at runtime
EXPOSE 80
CMD ["./bin/thrust", "./bin/rails", "server"] The last change is to update ./bin/docker-entrypoint script. I always try to keep it as close to the original Rails template as possible. Below is the final version of the script. #!/bin/bash -e

# If running the rails server then create or migrate existing database
if [ "${@: -2:1}" == "./bin/rails" ] && [ "${@: -1:1}" == "server" ]; then
  ./bin/rails db:prepare
fi

exec "${@}" That is all! Thanks to the Traefik container-based configuration, it will read the exposed port from the container and route the traffic accordingly after you deploy the changes. After deploy is finished, you can log in to the container and check if Thruster is running: rails@docker:~$ ps aux
USER         PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
rails          1  0.0  0.3 1232848 13124 ?       Ssl  09:26   0:06 /usr/local/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/thruster-0.1.8-x86_64-linux/exe/x86_64-linux/thrust ./bin/rails server Summary Since there are no visible cons of using Thruster in your Rails application, I highly recommend using it. It can improve the performance of your application and reduce the load on the server. It is also a good idea to use it as a preparation for the upcoming Kamal 2 release. The Rails World 2024 conference ended last week, and a lot of new components of the Rails ecosystem were released during it including Kamal 2. I decided to make some preparations for the upcoming changes. In March 2024, the Basecamp team released Thruster , a small, Go-based proxy server for Rails. While the original idea of Thruster was to provide the ability to build production-ready Rails applications from a single container for the ONCE project, it will fit perfectly into the Kamal ecosystem. Thruster Isn’t It a Redundancy? Wait? Another proxy server? Why do we need it? Allow me to explain. It doesn’t matter whether we use Traefik with Kamal v1 or Kamal-proxy with Kamal v2; inside the container, we still run Puma (or any other Ruby application server) that serves requests to the application. Besides this, Puma is also responsible for serving application assets – images, stylesheets, JavaScript files, etc. – to the clients. Before Kamal came into the scene, we usually had Nginx in our infrastructure schema. Nginx is a classic web server that can serve static files efficiently. Unfortunately, it is not adapted to container-based setups as you need to manage its configuration via a config file. However, without Nginx, Puma is not the best choice to serve static files. This is where Thruster comes into play. It wraps the Puma instance and efficiently serves static files with X-Sendfile acceleration, while Puma is responsible for the dynamic content. Thruster also provides GZip compression which was available in Traefik via middleware but won’t exist in kamal-proxy. GZip compression plays a crucial role in optimizing web performance by significantly reducing the size of files transmitted between a server and a client. By compressing assets like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, GZIP decreases bandwidth usage and accelerates the loading times of web pages, providing users with a faster, more seamless browsing experience. via middleware This not only enhances user satisfaction but also improves search engine rankings, as faster websites tend to rank higher in search results. Additionally, reducing the size of data transfers lightens the load on servers, allowing them to handle more requests efficiently and lowering hosting costs. A reasonable question would be “Why I cannot do a GZIP compression in Rails?” Technically, you can with Rack::Deflater . But since Thruster is already responsible for serving public assets, it can also efficiently handle compression. Rack::Deflater Besides compression, Thruster also provides basic HTTP caching of public assets and HTTP/2 support. With Thruster, your Rails application can be treated as a black box, which can serve any kind of request efficiently. With Thruster, your Rails application can be treated as a black box, which can serve any kind of request efficiently. How to Use Thruster is straightforward to use if you’re already using Puma. First, you need to add Thruster to your Gemfile: # Gemfile

gem 'thruster' # Gemfile

gem 'thruster' Run bundle install, and you are ready to go. Since Thruster is written in Go, the platform-specific binary will be downloaded and installed with the gem. bundle install, I always create binstubs to have all the necessary commands in one place: $ bundle binstubs thruster $ bundle binstubs thruster By default, Thruster will listen on port 80, while Puma will stay on port 3000. Knowing this, we should update our application Dockerfile accordingly. I assume here that your application is already dockerized. I replaced the port that is getting exposed from 3000 to 80 and added ./bin/thrust to the default command. Dockerfile ./bin/thrust # Dockerfile

# Entrypoint prepares the database.
ENTRYPOINT ["/rails/bin/docker-entrypoint"]

# Start server via Thruster by default, this can be overwritten at runtime
EXPOSE 80
CMD ["./bin/thrust", "./bin/rails", "server"] # Dockerfile

# Entrypoint prepares the database.
ENTRYPOINT ["/rails/bin/docker-entrypoint"]

# Start server via Thruster by default, this can be overwritten at runtime
EXPOSE 80
CMD ["./bin/thrust", "./bin/rails", "server"] The last change is to update ./bin/docker-entrypoint script. I always try to keep it as close to the original Rails template as possible. ./bin/docker-entrypoint original Rails template Below is the final version of the script. #!/bin/bash -e

# If running the rails server then create or migrate existing database
if [ "${@: -2:1}" == "./bin/rails" ] && [ "${@: -1:1}" == "server" ]; then
  ./bin/rails db:prepare
fi

exec "${@}" #!/bin/bash -e

# If running the rails server then create or migrate existing database
if [ "${@: -2:1}" == "./bin/rails" ] && [ "${@: -1:1}" == "server" ]; then
  ./bin/rails db:prepare
fi

exec "${@}" That is all! Thanks to the Traefik container-based configuration, it will read the exposed port from the container and route the traffic accordingly after you deploy the changes. After deploy is finished, you can log in to the container and check if Thruster is running: rails@docker:~$ ps aux
USER         PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
rails          1  0.0  0.3 1232848 13124 ?       Ssl  09:26   0:06 /usr/local/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/thruster-0.1.8-x86_64-linux/exe/x86_64-linux/thrust ./bin/rails server rails@docker:~$ ps aux
USER         PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
rails          1  0.0  0.3 1232848 13124 ?       Ssl  09:26   0:06 /usr/local/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/thruster-0.1.8-x86_64-linux/exe/x86_64-linux/thrust ./bin/rails server Summary Since there are no visible cons of using Thruster in your Rails application, I highly recommend using it. It can improve the performance of your application and reduce the load on the server. It is also a good idea to use it as a preparation for the upcoming Kamal 2 release.

Rails Thruster 101: A Quick Guide

Upgrading From Rails 7.1 to Rails 7.2: A Step-by-Step Guide for Enhancing Your Application

The Noonification: Buh-Bye Webpack and Node.js, Hello Rails and Import Maps (8/7/2024)

I enjoy spending time learning new technologies. However, often the biggest drawback of working with new technologies are the inevitable pain points that come with early adoption. I saw this quite a bit when I was getting up to speed with Web3 in “How to Transition from Full-Stack Developer to Web3 Pioneer in 2022.” As software engineers, we’re accustomed to accepting these early-adopter challenges when giving new tech a test drive. What works best for me is to keep a running list of notes and commands I’ve executed since seemingly illogical steps don’t remain in my memory. Aside from Web3, I also found this challenge in the JavaScript space, with the semi-standard requirements of using Node.js and Webpack. I wanted to identify a solution where I could just use JavaScript as is without toiling away with Node.js and Webpack. I recently read how the Rails 7 release addressed this very situation. So, that’s the use case I’ll be covering in this article. About Rails To be fully transparent, my experience with Ruby and Ruby on Rails is little to none. I remember watching someone issue some commands to create a fully functional service years ago, and I thought, “Wow, that looks awesome.” But I’ve never spent time playing around with this approach to building services and applications. I’m pretty sure I saw that demo in early 2006 because Rails first emerged in late 2005. Like I saw in the demonstration, the end result was a service that supported the model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern, a pattern that I was familiar with through my early use of the Spring, Struts, JSF, and Seam frameworks. Rails maintains a promise to keep things straightforward while adhering to DRY (don’t repeat yourself) practices. To help honor this promise, Ruby uses Gems for engineers to introduce shared dependencies into their projects. Version 7 Highlights In late 2021, the seventh major version of Rails introduced some exciting features: Asynchronous querying – getting away from running queries serially
Encrypted database layer – securing data between the service and persistence layers
Comparison validator – allows object validation before persistence
Import maps – no longer require Node.js and Webpack for JavaScript libraries That last feature is what drove me to write this article. How Do Import Maps Work? At a high level, the importmaps-rails Gem allows developers to import maps into their applications. The use of /bin/importmap allows engineers to update, pin, or unpin dependencies as needed. This is similar to how Maven and Gradle work in Java-based projects. This eliminates needing to deal with the complexities related to bundling packages and transpiling ES6 and Babel. Goodbye Webpack! Goodbye Node.js! Let’s Build Something Since I hadn’t even touched Ruby on Rails in almost two decades, the first thing I needed to do was follow this guide to install Ruby 3.3 on my MacBook Pro. Once installed, I just needed to install the Ruby plugin as part of my IntelliJ IDEA IDE. Then, I created a new Ruby on Rails project in IntelliJ called import-map and specified the use of Importmap for the JavaScript framework: With the project created, I first wanted to see how easy it would be to use a local JavaScript library. So, I created a new JavaScript file called /public/jvc_utilities.js with the following contents: export default function() {
    console.log('*****************');
    console.log('* jvc-utilities *');
    console.log('* version 0.0.1 *');
    console.log('*****************');
} The default function simply echoes some commands to the JavaScript console. Next, I created an HTML file (/public/jvc-utilities.html) with the following contents: <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>jvc-utilities</title>
    </head>

    <script type="importmap">
        { "imports": { "jvc_utilities": "./jvc_utilities.js"} }
    </script>
    <script type="module">
        import JvcUtilities from "jvc_utilities";

        JvcUtilities();
    </script>

    <h3>jvc-utilities.html</h3>

    <p>Open the console to see the output of the 
       <code>JvcUtilities()</code> function.
    </p>
</html> This example demonstrates how a local JavaScript file can be used with a public HTML file— without any additional work. Next, I created a new controller called Example: bin/rails generate controller Example index I wanted to use the Lodash library for this example, so I used the following command to add the library to my import-map project: bin/importmap pin lodash To add some JavaScript-based functionality to the controller, I updated javascript/controllers/example_controller.js to look like this: import { Controller } from "@hotwired/stimulus"
import _ from "lodash"

export default class extends Controller {
  connect() {
    const array = [1, 2, 3]
    const doubled = _.map(array, n => n * 2)
    console.log('array', array)  // Output: [1, 2, 3]
    console.log('doubled', doubled)  // Output: [2, 4, 6]
    this.element.textContent = `array=${array} doubled=${doubled.join(', ')}`
  }
} This logic establishes an array of three values, and then it doubles the values. I use the Lodash map() method to do this. Finally, I updated views/example/index.html.erb to contain the following: <h3>Example Controller</h3>

<div data-controller="example"></div> At this point, the following URIs are now available: /jvc-utilities.html
/example/index Let’s Deploy and Validate Rather than run the Rails service locally, I thought I would use Heroku instead. This way, I could make sure my service could be accessible for other consumers. Using my Heroku account, I followed the “Getting Started on Heroku with Ruby” guide. Based upon my project, my first step was to add a file named Procfile with the following contents: web: bundle exec puma -C config/puma.rb Next, I used the Heroku CLI to create a new application in Heroku: heroku login
heroku create With the create command, I had the following application up and running: Creating app... done, ⬢ lit-basin-84681
https://lit-basin-84681-3f5a7507b174.herokuapp.com/ | https://git.heroku.com/lit-basin-84681.git This step also created the Git remote that the Heroku ecosystem uses. Now, all I needed do was push my latest updates to Heroku and deploy the application: git push heroku main With that, my code was pushed to Heroku, which then compiled and deployed my application. In less than a minute, I saw the following, letting me know that my application was ready for use: remote: Verifying deploy... done.
To https://git.heroku.com/lit-basin-84681.git
   fe0b7ad..1a21bdd  main -> main Then, I navigated to the /example/index page using my Heroku URL (which is unique to my application, but I have since taken it down): https://lit-basin-84681-3f5a7507b174.herokuapp.com/example/index This is what I saw: And when I viewed the JavaScript console in my browser, the following logs appeared: Navigating to /jvc-utilities.html, I saw the following information: When I viewed the JavaScript console in my browser, I saw the the following logs: Success. I was able to use a self-contained JavaScript library and also the public Lodash JavaScript library in my Rails 7 application—all by using Import Maps and without needing to deal with Webpack or Node.js. Buh-bye, Webpack and Node.js! Conclusion My readers may recall my personal mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional: “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” — J. Vester In this article, I dove head-first into Rails 7 and used Import Maps to show how easily you can use JavaScript libraries without the extra effort of needing to use Webpack and Node.js. I was quite impressed by the small amount of time that was required to accomplish my goals despite it being over two decades since I had last seen Rails in action. From a deployment perspective, the effort to deploy the Rails application onto the Heroku platform consisted of the creation of a Procfile and three CLI commands. In both cases, Rails and Heroku adhere to my mission statement by allowing me to remain laser-focused on delivering value to my customers and not get bogged down by challenges with Webpack, Node.js, or even DevOps tasks. While I am certain we will continue to face not-so-ideal pain points when exploring new technologies, I am also confident that in time, we will see similar accomplishments as I demonstrated in this article. As always, my source code can be found on GitLab here. Have a really great day! I enjoy spending time learning new technologies. However, often the biggest drawback of working with new technologies are the inevitable pain points that come with early adoption. I saw this quite a bit when I was getting up to speed with Web3 in “ How to Transition from Full-Stack Developer to Web3 Pioneer in 2022 .” How to Transition from Full-Stack Developer to Web3 Pioneer in 2022 As software engineers, we’re accustomed to accepting these early-adopter challenges when giving new tech a test drive. What works best for me is to keep a running list of notes and commands I’ve executed since seemingly illogical steps don’t remain in my memory. Aside from Web3, I also found this challenge in the JavaScript space, with the semi-standard requirements of using Node.js and Webpack. I wanted to identify a solution where I could just use JavaScript as is without toiling away with Node.js and Webpack. I recently read how the Rails 7 release addressed this very situation . So, that’s the use case I’ll be covering in this article. this very situation About Rails To be fully transparent, my experience with Ruby and Ruby on Rails is little to none. I remember watching someone issue some commands to create a fully functional service years ago, and I thought, “Wow, that looks awesome.” But I’ve never spent time playing around with this approach to building services and applications. I’m pretty sure I saw that demo in early 2006 because Rails first emerged in late 2005. Like I saw in the demonstration, the end result was a service that supported the model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern, a pattern that I was familiar with through my early use of the Spring, Struts, JSF, and Seam frameworks. Rails maintains a promise to keep things straightforward while adhering to DRY (don’t repeat yourself) practices. To help honor this promise, Ruby uses Gems for engineers to introduce shared dependencies into their projects. Version 7 Highlights In late 2021, the seventh major version of Rails introduced some exciting features: Asynchronous querying – getting away from running queries serially Encrypted database layer – securing data between the service and persistence layers Comparison validator – allows object validation before persistence Import maps – no longer require Node.js and Webpack for JavaScript libraries Asynchronous querying – getting away from running queries serially Encrypted database layer – securing data between the service and persistence layers Comparison validator – allows object validation before persistence Import maps – no longer require Node.js and Webpack for JavaScript libraries That last feature is what drove me to write this article. How Do Import Maps Work? At a high level, the importmaps-rails Gem allows developers to import maps into their applications. The use of /bin/importmap allows engineers to update, pin, or unpin dependencies as needed. This is similar to how Maven and Gradle work in Java-based projects. importmaps-rails /bin/importmap This eliminates needing to deal with the complexities related to bundling packages and transpiling ES6 and Babel. Goodbye Webpack! Goodbye Node.js! Let’s Build Something Since I hadn’t even touched Ruby on Rails in almost two decades, the first thing I needed to do was follow this guide to install Ruby 3.3 on my MacBook Pro. Once installed, I just needed to install the Ruby plugin as part of my IntelliJ IDEA IDE. this guide install the Ruby plugin Then, I created a new Ruby on Rails project in IntelliJ called import-map and specified the use of Importmap for the JavaScript framework: import-map Importmap With the project created, I first wanted to see how easy it would be to use a local JavaScript library. So, I created a new JavaScript file called /public/jvc_utilities.js with the following contents: /public/jvc_utilities.js export default function() {
    console.log('*****************');
    console.log('* jvc-utilities *');
    console.log('* version 0.0.1 *');
    console.log('*****************');
} export default function() {
    console.log('*****************');
    console.log('* jvc-utilities *');
    console.log('* version 0.0.1 *');
    console.log('*****************');
} The default function simply echoes some commands to the JavaScript console. Next, I created an HTML file ( /public/jvc-utilities.html ) with the following contents: /public/jvc-utilities.html <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>jvc-utilities</title>
    </head>

    <script type="importmap">
        { "imports": { "jvc_utilities": "./jvc_utilities.js"} }
    </script>
    <script type="module">
        import JvcUtilities from "jvc_utilities";

        JvcUtilities();
    </script>

    <h3>jvc-utilities.html</h3>

    <p>Open the console to see the output of the 
       <code>JvcUtilities()</code> function.
    </p>
</html> <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>jvc-utilities</title>
    </head>

    <script type="importmap">
        { "imports": { "jvc_utilities": "./jvc_utilities.js"} }
    </script>
    <script type="module">
        import JvcUtilities from "jvc_utilities";

        JvcUtilities();
    </script>

    <h3>jvc-utilities.html</h3>

    <p>Open the console to see the output of the 
       <code>JvcUtilities()</code> function.
    </p>
</html> This example demonstrates how a local JavaScript file can be used with a public HTML file— without any additional work. Next, I created a new controller called Example : Example bin/rails generate controller Example index bin/rails generate controller Example index I wanted to use the Lodash library for this example, so I used the following command to add the library to my import-map project: Lodash library import-map bin/importmap pin lodash bin/importmap pin lodash To add some JavaScript-based functionality to the controller, I updated javascript/controllers/example_controller.js to look like this: javascript/controllers/example_controller.js import { Controller } from "@hotwired/stimulus"
import _ from "lodash"

export default class extends Controller {
  connect() {
    const array = [1, 2, 3]
    const doubled = _.map(array, n => n * 2)
    console.log('array', array)  // Output: [1, 2, 3]
    console.log('doubled', doubled)  // Output: [2, 4, 6]
    this.element.textContent = `array=${array} doubled=${doubled.join(', ')}`
  }
} import { Controller } from "@hotwired/stimulus"
import _ from "lodash"

export default class extends Controller {
  connect() {
    const array = [1, 2, 3]
    const doubled = _.map(array, n => n * 2)
    console.log('array', array)  // Output: [1, 2, 3]
    console.log('doubled', doubled)  // Output: [2, 4, 6]
    this.element.textContent = `array=${array} doubled=${doubled.join(', ')}`
  }
} This logic establishes an array of three values, and then it doubles the values. I use the Lodash map() method to do this. map() Finally, I updated views/example/index.html.erb to contain the following: views/example/index.html.erb <h3>Example Controller</h3>

<div data-controller="example"></div> <h3>Example Controller</h3>

<div data-controller="example"></div> At this point, the following URIs are now available: /jvc-utilities.html /example/index /jvc-utilities.html /jvc-utilities.html /example/index /example/index Let’s Deploy and Validate Rather than run the Rails service locally, I thought I would use Heroku instead. This way, I could make sure my service could be accessible for other consumers. Using my Heroku account, I followed the “ Getting Started on Heroku with Ruby ” guide. Based upon my project, my first step was to add a file named Procfile with the following contents: Getting Started on Heroku with Ruby Procfile web: bundle exec puma -C config/puma.rb web: bundle exec puma -C config/puma.rb Next, I used the Heroku CLI to create a new application in Heroku: heroku login
heroku create heroku login
heroku create With the create command, I had the following application up and running: create Creating app... done, ⬢ lit-basin-84681
https://lit-basin-84681-3f5a7507b174.herokuapp.com/ | https://git.heroku.com/lit-basin-84681.git Creating app... done, ⬢ lit-basin-84681
https://lit-basin-84681-3f5a7507b174.herokuapp.com/ | https://git.heroku.com/lit-basin-84681.git This step also created the Git remote that the Heroku ecosystem uses. Now, all I needed do was push my latest updates to Heroku and deploy the application: git push heroku main git push heroku main With that, my code was pushed to Heroku, which then compiled and deployed my application. In less than a minute, I saw the following, letting me know that my application was ready for use: remote: Verifying deploy... done.
To https://git.heroku.com/lit-basin-84681.git
   fe0b7ad..1a21bdd  main -> main remote: Verifying deploy... done.
To https://git.heroku.com/lit-basin-84681.git
   fe0b7ad..1a21bdd  main -> main Then, I navigated to the /example/index page using my Heroku URL (which is unique to my application, but I have since taken it down): https://lit-basin-84681-3f5a7507b174.herokuapp.com/example/index /example/index https://lit-basin-84681-3f5a7507b174.herokuapp.com/example/index This is what I saw: And when I viewed the JavaScript console in my browser, the following logs appeared: Navigating to /jvc-utilities.html , I saw the following information: /jvc-utilities.html When I viewed the JavaScript console in my browser, I saw the the following logs: Success. I was able to use a self-contained JavaScript library and also the public Lodash JavaScript library in my Rails 7 application—all by using Import Maps and without needing to deal with Webpack or Node.js. Buh-bye, Webpack and Node.js! Conclusion My readers may recall my personal mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional: “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” — J. Vester “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” — J. Vester In this article, I dove head-first into Rails 7 and used Import Maps to show how easily you can use JavaScript libraries without the extra effort of needing to use Webpack and Node.js. I was quite impressed by the small amount of time that was required to accomplish my goals despite it being over two decades since I had last seen Rails in action. From a deployment perspective, the effort to deploy the Rails application onto the Heroku platform consisted of the creation of a Procfile and three CLI commands. Procfile In both cases, Rails and Heroku adhere to my mission statement by allowing me to remain laser-focused on delivering value to my customers and not get bogged down by challenges with Webpack, Node.js, or even DevOps tasks. While I am certain we will continue to face not-so-ideal pain points when exploring new technologies, I am also confident that in time, we will see similar accomplishments as I demonstrated in this article. As always, my source code can be found on GitLab here . here Have a really great day!

Buh-Bye Webpack and Node.js, Hello Rails and Import Maps

Buh-Bye Webpack এবং Node.js, Hello Rails এবং Import Maps

Tschüß Webpack und Node.js, hallo Rails und Import Maps

Buh-Bye Webpack y Node.js, Hello Rails e Importar mapas

Buh-Bye Webpack et Node.js, Hello Rails et Import Maps

अलविदा वेबपैक और नोड.जेएस, नमस्ते रेल्स और इम्पोर्ट मैप्स

さようなら Webpack と Node.js、こんにちは Rails と Import Maps

이제 안녕 Webpack 및 Node.js, Hello Rails 및 가져오기 맵

Buh-Bye Webpack e Node.js, Hello Rails e Import Maps

Прощайте, Webpack и Node.js, Hello Rails и импорт карт

Buh-Bye Webpack ve Node.js, Hello Rails ve İçe Aktarma Haritaları

Buh-Bye Webpack và Node.js, Hello Rails và Nhập bản đồ

告别 Webpack 和 Node.js，迎接 Rails 和 Import Maps

A Simplified Guide for the"Dockerazition" of Ruby and Rails With React Front-End App 

রিঅ্যাক্ট ফ্রন্ট-এন্ড অ্যাপ সহ রুবি এবং রেলের "ডকেরাজিশন" এর জন্য একটি সরলীকৃত গাইড 

Eine vereinfachte Anleitung zur „Dockerazition“ von Ruby und Rails mit der React Front-End-App

Una guía simplificada para la "Dockerazition" de Ruby y Rails con la aplicación React Front-End 

Un guide simplifié pour la « Dockerazition » de Ruby et Rails avec l'application React Front-End 

रिएक्ट फ्रंट-एंड ऐप के साथ रूबी और रेल्स के "डॉकराज़िशन" के लिए एक सरलीकृत गाइड

React フロントエンド アプリを使用した Ruby と Rails の「Docker 化」の簡易ガイド

React 프런트엔드 앱을 사용한 Ruby 및 Rails의 "Dockerazition"에 대한 단순화된 가이드 

Um guia simplificado para o "Dockerazition" de Ruby e Rails com o aplicativo React Front-End 

Упрощенное руководство по «докеразии» Ruby и Rails с помощью внешнего приложения React 

React Front-End Uygulaması ile Ruby ve Rails'in "Dockerazition"u için Basitleştirilmiş Bir Kılavuz 

Hướng dẫn đơn giản hóa về "Dockerazition" của Ruby và Rails với ứng dụng React Front-End 

使用 React 前端应用程序对 Ruby 和 Rails 进行“Dockerazition”的简化指南

Imagine an industry that has seen little innovation since the Civil War. It may seem unbelievable, but the United States railroad infrastructure is still the same as it was back in the original era. Taking on the industry to improve and plan for the future is Evertrak -- ready for a railroad infrastructure revolution. The company's mission is bold: replace traditional wooden railroad ties with cutting-edge, sustainable alternatives made from recycled plastics. Evertrak is addressing environmental concerns and industry challenges head-on. \Tim Noonan, CEO of Evertrak, doesn’t mince words: “It’s 2024!” he emphasizes. “We can do better. We must do better.” His vision of “the railroads of our Nation rolling on ties made from recycled plastics” isn’t just about sustainability—it’s about transforming an industry stuck in the past and solving real problems. Evertrak's journey began with a revolutionary idea: What if the plastic waste choking our planet could become the foundation of our transportation infrastructure? The team realized the industry needed more than just a new product—it needed a paradigm shift. “Our insight was that the industry needed a tie that was as strong as wood, not as cheap as wood,” Noonan explains. “We’re not offering a band-aid. We’re providing a solution for a real problem in the industry.” Addressing Industry Challenges Safety and efficiency are paramount in the railroad industry. With the adoption of Precision Schedule Railroading (PSR), which focuses on moving individual cars rather than waiting for long trains to be built, uptime has become more critical than ever. Evertrak’s ties directly address this need and offer a redefinition of what’s possible in railroad operations. “Using our tie, railroads won't have to replace ties in high decay zones every 8-12 years,” says Noonan. “This means better uptime for PSR and lower total cost of ownership.” Sustainability Impact Experts suggest only 9% of plastic waste is effectively recycled globally. And industry estimates for North America alone suggest 20 million wooden railroad ties are replaced annually—equivalent to approximately 6 million trees. As Noonan mentioned, with an average lifespan of around a decade (reduced to just 5 years in high-rot regions), the environmental impact of current railroad practices is significant and the environmental benefits of Evertrak's ties are clear. By using recycled plastics, Evertrak not only diverts hundreds of thousands of pounds of waste from landfills but also prevents deforestation and avoids the CO2 produced when traditional ties are incinerated or landfilled at the end of their life. “This is just the beginning,” Noonan promises, explaining that the industry replaces more millions of wood ties a year. For Noonan and Evertrak, it’s about securing a livable planet for future generations. “Imagine that many trees saved. Imagine millions of pounds of plastic put to better use and removed from our landfills and oceans. Every tie we produce is a blow against deforestation and plastic pollution.” Union Pacific’s commitment to alternative railroad ties strikes Noonan as a resounding endorsement of this important industry shift, and the CEO sees it as a rallying cry: “UP is the de facto leader of the railroad industry. Their measured implementation of our ties builds trust and confidence for others. I think the message is: It’s time to get on board.” Industry Veterans Signal Transformation One of the most promising signs of Evertrak’s potential to revolutionize the railroad industry is the company’s ability to attract respected executives who have historically been on the wood tie side of the business. “Yes, it really signals disruption in the industry,” Noonan explains. “These executives understand that the Class 1 railroads do not have alternatives when it comes to ties. They understand the business practices and products that keep things going between big creosote and the railroads.” This insider knowledge is proving invaluable as Evertrak seeks to transform the industry. With the never-ending rise of single-use plastic and the detrimental impact of deforestation, Noonan believes there's room for improvement. “We can do better,” he asserts. “I've been speaking with a number of industry veterans who believe that the time is right for transformation.” The involvement of these industry veterans not only lends credibility to Evertrak’s mission but also suggests that the railroad industry as a whole might be gearing up for a significant shift towards more sustainable practices. Future of Sustainable Infrastructure in Railroads Evertrak’s highest priority is continuing to build trust with Class 1 customers, bringing awareness to one of America’s oldest industries—some of the first tracks were laid nearly 200 years ago—so they have the resources and support to join the modern era. The company’s goals are ambitious: save millions of trees, drastically reduce plastic buildup, and do it all now. Evertrak’s approach is collaborative, empowering the customer to dictate success through communication and keeping commitments. “We have 7 years of proven results,” Noonan says. “And that includes never missing a delivery timeline. To date, we’ve installed over 100,000 composite ties with zero claims.” For other companies looking to innovate with sustainable materials, Noonan offers this advice: “Identify a pain point and make that pain go away for the customer. Your customer doesn’t care that the product is made from sustainable material; they want their problem to go away. Deliver the business case, and the case for sustainability comes along to close the deal.” As the railroad industry grapples with the need for more sustainable practices, companies like Evertrak are proving that environmental responsibility and business efficiency can go hand in hand. By addressing real industry pain points with innovative, sustainable solutions, Evertrak is helping to lay the tracks for a sustainable future in transportation infrastructure. The implications of this shift are far-reaching, potentially influencing other sectors of the transportation industry. As Noonan puts it, "If a pain point in the business can be solved through a sustainable solution, I believe the industry can have the business case and the benefit of sustainability without a tradeoff." With industry leaders like Union Pacific embracing these innovations, it's clear that the future of railroad infrastructure isn’t about maintaining the status quo—it’s about revolutionizing it for a more sustainable, efficient tomorrow. In Noonan’s words, “It’s time for the railroad industry to declare its independence from wood ties and creosote. Join us in this revolution! We’re not just making ties—we’re making history.” Imagine an industry that has seen little innovation since the Civil War. It may seem unbelievable, but the United States railroad infrastructure is still the same as it was back in the original era. Taking on the industry to improve and plan for the future is Evertrak -- ready for a railroad infrastructure revolution. The company's mission is bold: replace traditional wooden railroad ties with cutting-edge, sustainable alternatives made from recycled plastics. Evertrak is addressing environmental concerns and industry challenges head-on. Evertrak Evertrak \Tim Noonan, CEO of Evertrak, doesn’t mince words: “It’s 2024!” he emphasizes. “We can do better. We must do better.” His vision of “the railroads of our Nation rolling on ties made from recycled plastics” isn’t just about sustainability—it’s about transforming an industry stuck in the past and solving real problems. “It’s 2024!” he emphasizes. “We can do better. We must do better.” His vision of “the railroads of our Nation rolling on ties made from recycled plastics” isn’t just about sustainability—it’s about transforming an industry stuck in the past and solving real problems. must sustainability—it’s about transforming an industry stuck in the past and solving real problems. Evertrak's journey began with a revolutionary idea: What if the plastic waste choking our planet could become the foundation of our transportation infrastructure? The team realized the industry needed more than just a new product—it needed a paradigm shift. “Our insight was that the industry needed a tie that was as strong as wood, not as cheap as wood,” Noonan explains. “We’re not offering a band-aid. We’re providing a solution for a real problem in the industry.” Addressing Industry Challenges Addressing Industry Challenges Safety and efficiency are paramount in the railroad industry. With the adoption of Precision Schedule Railroading (PSR), which focuses on moving individual cars rather than waiting for long trains to be built, uptime has become more critical than ever. Evertrak’s ties directly address this need and offer a redefinition of what’s possible in railroad operations. “Using our tie, railroads won't have to replace ties in high decay zones every 8-12 years,” says Noonan. “This means better uptime for PSR and lower total cost of ownership.” Sustainability Impact Sustainability Impact Experts suggest only 9% of plastic waste is effectively recycled globally. And industry estimates for North America alone suggest 20 million wooden railroad ties are replaced annually—equivalent to approximately 6 million trees. As Noonan mentioned, with an average lifespan of around a decade (reduced to just 5 years in high-rot regions), the environmental impact of current railroad practices is significant and the environmental benefits of Evertrak's ties are clear. only 9% only 9% By using recycled plastics, Evertrak not only diverts hundreds of thousands of pounds of waste from landfills but also prevents deforestation and avoids the CO2 produced when traditional ties are incinerated or landfilled at the end of their life. “This is just the beginning,” Noonan promises, explaining that the industry replaces more millions of wood ties a year. For Noonan and Evertrak, it’s about securing a livable planet for future generations. “Imagine that many trees saved. Imagine millions of pounds of plastic put to better use and removed from our landfills and oceans. Every tie we produce is a blow against deforestation and plastic pollution.” that millions Union Pacific’s commitment to alternative railroad ties strikes Noonan as a resounding endorsement of this important industry shift, and the CEO sees it as a rallying cry: “UP is the de facto leader of the railroad industry. Their measured implementation of our ties builds trust and confidence for others. I think the message is: It’s time to get on board.” Industry Veterans Signal Transformation One of the most promising signs of Evertrak’s potential to revolutionize the railroad industry is the company’s ability to attract respected executives who have historically been on the wood tie side of the business. “Yes, it really signals disruption in the industry,” Noonan explains. “These executives understand that the Class 1 railroads do not have alternatives when it comes to ties. They understand the business practices and products that keep things going between big creosote and the railroads.” “Yes, it really signals disruption in the industry,” Noonan explains. “These executives understand that the Class 1 railroads do not have alternatives when it comes to ties. They understand the business practices and products that keep things going between big creosote and the railroads.” This insider knowledge is proving invaluable as Evertrak seeks to transform the industry. With the never-ending rise of single-use plastic and the detrimental impact of deforestation, Noonan believes there's room for improvement. “We can do better,” he asserts. “I've been speaking with a number of industry veterans who believe that the time is right for transformation.” The involvement of these industry veterans not only lends credibility to Evertrak’s mission but also suggests that the railroad industry as a whole might be gearing up for a significant shift towards more sustainable practices. Future of Sustainable Infrastructure in Railroads Evertrak’s highest priority is continuing to build trust with Class 1 customers, bringing awareness to one of America’s oldest industries—some of the first tracks were laid nearly 200 years ago—so they have the resources and support to join the modern era. The company’s goals are ambitious: save millions of trees, drastically reduce plastic buildup, and do it all now. Evertrak’s approach is collaborative, empowering the customer to dictate success through communication and keeping commitments. “We have 7 years of proven results,” Noonan says. “And that includes never missing a delivery timeline. To date, we’ve installed over 100,000 composite ties with zero claims.” zero For other companies looking to innovate with sustainable materials, Noonan offers this advice: “Identify a pain point and make that pain go away for the customer. Your customer doesn’t care that the product is made from sustainable material; they want their problem to go away. Deliver the business case, and the case for sustainability comes along to close the deal.” As the railroad industry grapples with the need for more sustainable practices, companies like Evertrak are proving that environmental responsibility and business efficiency can go hand in hand. By addressing real industry pain points with innovative, sustainable solutions, Evertrak is helping to lay the tracks for a sustainable future in transportation infrastructure. The implications of this shift are far-reaching, potentially influencing other sectors of the transportation industry. As Noonan puts it, "If a pain point in the business can be solved through a sustainable solution, I believe the industry can have the business case and the benefit of sustainability without a tradeoff." With industry leaders like Union Pacific embracing these innovations, it's clear that the future of railroad infrastructure isn’t about maintaining the status quo—it’s about revolutionizing it for a more sustainable, efficient tomorrow. In Noonan’s words, “It’s time for the railroad industry to declare its independence from wood ties and creosote. Join us in this revolution! We’re not just making ties—we’re making history.”

Railroad Infrastructure: How Evertrak is Leading the Way with Sustainable Materials

**SANTA MONICA, CA, April 4th, 2024/Chainwire/--**Raiinmaker, a Web3 and AI Technology Company, is announcing the closing of a $7.5M seed round ahead of its Mainnet launch and native token $Coiin TGE. Notable investors in this funding round: Jump Crypto and Cypher Capital along with GDA Capital, Gate.io Labs, London Real Ventures, MEXC Global, Krypital Group, Alphabit, Launchpool, New Tribe Capital, Coach K, Axia 8 Ventures, Sheesha Finance, Andromeda Capital, Arcanum Capital, Bella Capital and Alpha Sigma Capital. The Raiinmaker Network boasts innovative features including a scalable and modular blockchain architecture, decentralized AI tools, and AI powered smart contracts. The company’s core focus lies in the scalable implementation of Decentralized AI and Web3 infrastructure to power Mass Adoption solutions in Sports, Gaming and Entertainment. Raiinmaker Super App users train AI right from their iOS or Android phones and earn fractional rewards based on the value of their contributions to decentralized AI models and infrastructure. Now everyone has the ability to train AI models and run a DePIN enabled validator node using just their smartphone from anywhere in the world. On the application, users are training the same stable diffusion models the community is using to generate AI art through fine tuning and data labeling. “The transformative power of AI and Web3 technology has the potential to empower the human race to an unprecedented degree and we are excited to be at the forefront of the decentralized AI Technology Revolution,” said J.D. Seraphine, Founder and CEO of Raiinmaker. Raiinmaker’s investor cap table includes other notable companies such as DCI Capital, Seed Thrift Ventures, Titans Ventures, WeeHodl, Kopman Capital, 7 O'Clock Capital Fund, Spicy Capital, NxGen.xyz, Absoluta Digital, Candaq, Mainchain Ventures, Panda Capital, Stealth Capital, Taisu, K300, Tulpar Capital, Acacia Digital, Simurg Labs, Gemhead, Alpha Capital, Green Arrow Ventures, Basics Capital, Legion Ventures, Coinvestor Ventures, Simplicity Blockchain, Aza Ventures, Transform Capital, Khan's DeFi Kitchen, HC Capital, Crypto Roundtable, Gemhead Capital, and Metazero Capital. With 70,000+ app downloads, over 150,000 nodes, 18 million transactions processed and an engaged community of over 200,000 worldwide, Raiinmaker empowers people all over the planet to contribute to decentralized AI infrastructure while earning crypto, no special technical knowledge required. About Raiinmaker Raiinmaker is an innovative Web3 and AI technology company that has successfully developed the Raiinmaker Mobile Application and Raiinmaker Network. The Raiinmaker App is a cutting-edge Web3 and decentralized AI platform that revolutionizes the monetization of users’ contribution to AI infrastructure. The Raiinmaker Network combines scalable Web3 and AI infrastructure that redefines value creation tied to digital identity, behavior, and reputation. The Raiinmaker AI Super App is powered by the Raiinmaker Network, providing seamless integration with native Protocol Web3 features. These features include Identity, NFT Minting, Token Creation, and AI Powered Smart Contracts. | | | Website x Telegram Discord Contact Head of Marketing Kris Seraphine kris@raiinmaker.com This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here.

Raiinmaker Closes $7.5M Funding To Advance Decentralized AI

For many years Nginx has been a default solution to serve as a reverse proxy for Rails applications. However, with the release of Kamal, the Rails community opened Traefik as a new reverse proxy solution. Within my 15 years of experience with Rails, I created an almost perfect configuration for Nginx that migrated through all my projects. With Traefik, I had to start from scratch. Traefik Intro Traefik is an Edge Router; it means that it’s the door to your platform and that it intercepts and routes every incoming request but does not process requests itself. When an incoming request comes to Traefik, it is getting served through the EntryPoint. Traefik can listen to multiple EntryPoints, and each EntryPoint is associated with a port and a protocol (HTTP/HTTPS, TCP, UDP). After the request is received, it is passed to the Router. Router is a rule that tells Traefik how to handle the request. It can be based on the path, the host, the headers, etc. The router will then forward the request to the appropriate service. But before a request is forwarded, it can be modified by the Middleware. Middleware is a piece of code that can modify the request or the response before it reaches the service. Middleware is the place where you can add authentication, rewrite the path, add headers, etc. To better understand how Traefik works, I provide an image from the official . Traefik documentation Compared to Nginx, the Traefik configuration is entirely different. Besides a traditional configuration file (which can be both in YAML and TOML formats), Traefik can be configured with dynamic configuration. It means that you can configure Traefik with a file, but also with a REST API, a Docker label, a Kubernetes annotation, etc. Since Kamal is a Docker orchestration tool, Traefik configuration is done with Docker labels. It means that you don’t need to write a configuration file; instead, you should provide labels to your Docker containers. Labels work dynamically, so you don’t need to reboot Traefik to apply them. At the same time, operating a Docker label can be pretty tricky, especially at the beginning. Traefik Dashboard The good news is that Traefik works pretty good with Kamal out of the box with Kamal (Kamal provides basic default configuration, which I will show later), and maybe you won’t need to change anything. However, if you want to take a look at how Traefik is configured, you may want to enable a . web dashboard To do this, open your Kamal config (usually ), and add the following lines. config/deploy.yml # config/deploy.yml

traefik:
  args:
    api.dashboard: true
  labels:
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.servixce: api@internal
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.rule: "Host(`traefik.onetribe.com`)"
    traefik.http.middlewares.auth.basicauth.users: user:$2y$05$us7dsDg56EJ/qojvhLvy9OEshrzoWjGSKXziBqeiFq3Ehf1pAiGSG
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.middlewares: auth@docker If you have a separate configuration for production and staging environments, you probably will have the last two labels in your environment-specific configuration files. # config/deploy.production.yml

traefik:
  labels:
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.rule: "Host(`traefik.onetribe.team`)"
    traefik.http.middlewares.auth.basicauth.users: user-production:$2y$05$us7dsDg56EJ/qojvhLvy9OEshrzoWjGSKXziBqeiFq3Ehf1pAiGSG

# config/deploy.staging.yml

traefik:
  labels:
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.rule: "Host(`traefik.staging.onetribe.team`)"
    traefik.http.middlewares.auth.basicauth.users: user-staging:$2y$05$us7dsDg56EJ/qojvhLvy9OEshrzoWjGSKXziBqeiFq3Ehf1pAiGSG Let’s go line by line in file. config/deploy.yml On line enables Traefik Dashboard, as it is disabled by default. 5, api.dashboard: true On line I defined a router that will serve the dashboard. The internal Traefik API service is called ; I attached it to the router. 7, api@internal dashboard Then, on line I defined a rule that tells Traefik to serve the dashboard on the domain. Rule can be based . 9, traefik.onetribe.team on the path, the host, the headers, etc Since I don’t want to expose the dashboard to the public, I added a basic authentication middleware on lines and . Traefik supports different authentication methods: , , , etc. I used basic authentication, as it is the easiest to configure. 9 10 basic digest forward Password can be encrypted with the command, which is a , and this is really amazing how software, which is 20 years old, is still in use. To encrypt a password for a new user, run the following command. htpasswd part of the Apache toolkit htpasswd -nB user Traefik Logging Besides the visualization of the configuration, it is important to have good logging. Most of my Kamal projects use AWS CloudWatch for logging, so I configured Traefik to send logs to CloudWatch. To do this, I added the following lines to the file. config/deploy.yml logging:
  driver: awslogs
  options:
    awslogs-region: us-east-1
    awslogs-group: application
    awslogs-create-group: true
    tag: "-" This will configure logging for your application containers. In the example above, I used as a log group; you can use any name you want. The option is important; I used the container name and ID to distinguish logs from different containers. The picture below demonstrates how logs are organized in the CloudWatch. application tag As you see, besides application container logs, I also have a Traefik log stream, which includes both error and access logs (which is not the best, but it is how it is). Traefik logging can be configured by passing arguments to the Traefik container. I assume that my health check requests are pretty fast, so I set the minimum duration to 50ms to filter not important data. traefik:
  args:
    log.format: json
    accesslog: true
    accesslog.format: json
    accesslog.filters.minduration: 50ms Middlewares 101 I already talked about middlewares earlier in this article; let’s have a closer look at them. Middlewares are a piece of code that can modify the request or the response before it reaches the service. I used a basic authentication middleware to protect the Traefik dashboard. As we already know, each router has a set of settings and is also a setting that accepts a list of middlewares. Each middleware should be defined with it is own labels. middlewares traefik.http.middlewares.<middleware_1>.basicauth.users: username:<encrypted_password>
traefik.http.middlewares.<middleware_2>.ipwhitelist.sourcerange: 127.0.0.1/32
traefik.http.routers.<router_name>.middlewares: <middleware_1>, <middleware_2>, <middleware_3> : Traefik middlewares are not global. They are attached to the router, so you need to define them for each router separately. Important Kamal adds a to each service that uses Traefik. It is essential to know because if you add a middleware to a router, it will replace the default middleware. If you want to add a middleware to the default middleware, you must add it to the list of middlewares. default middleware WWW Redirect Redirecting from a www to a non-www domain is a common practice. It is important to have a single domain for SEO and security reasons. In Nginx, I used to do this with a simple directive. rewrite server {
  server_name www.onetribe.team;
  return 301 $scheme://onetribe.team$request_uri;
} To do this with Traefik, you need to configure on the router. RedirectRegex middleware servers:
  web:
    hosts:
      - <ip_address>
    labels:
      traefik.http.routers.onetribe-web.middlewares: onetribe-web-www-redirect@docker
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-www-redirect.redirectregex.regex: ^http://www.(.*)
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-www-redirect.redirectregex.replacement: https://$1 You probably noticed that I used schema in regex. Why not ? In all my configurations with Traefik, I do HTTPS termination on the load balancer before the request reaches Traefik. In Rails, 7.1 introduced to handle such configurations. http:// https:// config.assume_ssl option Compress Almost all Nginx configurations I saw had a directive. Compressing responses to save bandwidth and speed up the website is a good practice. Digital Ocean has an , explaining how HTTP compression works and how to configure it with Nginx. gzip excellent tutorial server {
  # ...
  gzip on;
  gzip_comp_level 2;
  gzip_min_length 1000;
  gzip_proxied any;
  gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
  gzip_vary on;
  # ...
} Traefik has a that can be used to achieve the same result. Compress middleware servers:
  web:
    hosts:
      - <ip_address>
    labels:
      traefik.http.routers.onetribe-web.middlewares: onetribe-web-compress@docker
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-compress.compress: true Full Example The example below combines two middleware defined above and a middleware that is added by default by Kamal–Retry. The Retry middleware reissues requests a given number of times to a backend server if that server does not reply. servers:
  web:
    hosts:
      - <ip_address>
    labels:
      traefik.http.routers.onetribe-web.middlewares: onetribe-web-www-redirect@docker,onetribe-web-retry@docker,onetribe-web-compress@docker
      traefik.http.routers.onetribe-web.rule: PathPrefix(`/`)
      traefik.http.services.onetribe-web.loadbalancer.server.scheme: http

      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-www-redirect.redirectregex.regex: ^http://www.(.*)
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-www-redirect.redirectregex.replacement: https://$1

      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-compress.compress: true

      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-retry.retry.attempts: 5
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-retry.retry.initialinterval: 500ms Rails Assets Handling Last, it is not about the Traefik but about the Rails configuration. With Nginx, I usually didn’t care about how my CSS, JS, and other static assets were handled; Nginx did this for me. All required headers (like compression that we discussed above and cache control) were added by Nginx. Traefik is not a web server; it is an edge router, so it doesn’t handle static assets. It means that you need to configure Rails to handle static assets properly. Stop, Rails static file handling is slow and not efficient. And you are right, or at least you were right. Modern versions of Puma handle static assets well. Besides, in 2024, we usually use cloud storage like AWS S3 to handle user uploads, so Rails will only serve CSS and JS files, which is not a big deal for Puma. I ended with something like this in my file. config/environments/production.rb # config/environments/production.rb
  # ...

  config.public_file_server.enabled = true
  config.public_file_server.headers = {
    "Cache-Control" => "public, max-age=#{30.days.to_i}, must-revalidate"
  } header is important; it tells the browser how long it should cache the file. In this example, I set it to 30 days. Must-revalidate tells the browser to revalidate the file after the cache expires. Cache-Control With such settings, Rails will serve static files only once for each client. If you think this is not enough, you can use a CDN like Cloudflare or AWS CloudFront to cache responses from Rails and dramatically reduce the load on your server. Conclusion As it usually happens with new technologies, it takes time to get used to them. Traefik is not an exception. It took me a while to understand how it works and how to configure it. At the same time, I see the benefits of using Traefik over Nginx with Rails – the main one is, of course, support of Docker out of the box. I believe this was the main reason why Basecamp decided to go with Traefik. Almost a year has passed since I switched our first project to Traefik, and I’m happy with the result. I hope you will find this article useful. Feel free to ask questions in the comments below.

A Beginner's Guide to Traefik Tuning for Rails Applications

Ruby on Rails app redesign challenges Redesigning a Ruby on Rails application is a well-known challenge for many projects. Any project UI gets outdated. It needs to get a fresh look that’s more appealing to the users. It may not be an issue for web apps without live users. But it’s a tricky task for already launched businesses serving thousands of users per day. While a team is redesigning, the application should continue functioning. At the development time, the new design gets validated and tested against the back-end. If the back-end is incompatible, it must be adapted to the new realm. These changes should not break the old functionality. Overcoming these issues is essential in a Ruby on Rails application redesign. development This article shares the approach we took to apply the new design in one of our projects. The changes we made increased the project revenue by 30%. As a bonus, the implemented changes unleashed many other opportunities, including: Building a modern mobile application. Making the code more fault-tolerant, performant, and stable. Adding new features, such as preventing account sharing, that can increase the app revenue. Making the tech stack upgrade easier. Implementing traffic control and advanced caching. Making SEO optimization easier. Why redesign a Ruby on Rails app? There are several reasons why an app may consider implementing a new . Regardless of the motive, the ultimate goal is always the same - . Note, that keeping users using the app and not going away is the same goal. Due to an old and unhandy design, an app can make the customers leave. In this case, redesign also can help. If it’s clear that a redesign won’t have a positive impact on revenue, it may be an unnecessary expense. Redesigning is usually an expensive change. So, learn from the users if the design is a problem before making this decision. UI/UX design to increase revenue What is the new design? A new design consists of screens (mockups) created by a designer using software like Figma or Adobe Photoshop. In our case, the client provided the mockups, and our task was to turn them into code and integrate them with the existing back-end. We aimed to minimize downtime during the transition and reduce development efforts. Different technical approaches to a Ruby on Rails app redesign Nowadays, web projects must be responsive and have a mobile application. Modern web app design features a rich UI with many elements on one page. The old-fashioned way of generating HTML on the back-end is going away. Instead, a separate web front-end or mobile app handles the front-end, while the back-end serves data via API. In pure , the front-end code lives alongside the back-end. That can fulfill modern web app requirements and is cheap in the beginning. However, it becomes hard to maintain due to the mix of different technologies in one place. It makes it difficult to find developers who can understand and maintain the system. We prefer separate back-end and front-end. The specialists can do their job quickly with high quality on their end. Ruby On Rails applications The risk-free approach of a Ruby on Rails app redesign The project we received was a Ruby On Rails application with a Rest API implemented on Grape. An iOS app used this API. The web version used ERB and Slim templates with a UI from the previous decade. Some dynamic features on the web used Knockout.js, which is no longer maintained. To update the UI, we used the Next.js framework with TypeScript and implemented GraphQL for the API. To avoid errors, we created a separate repository for the new UI and extracted functionality that could be reused in both the old app and the new UI. The project took almost a year, with two developers and one project manager working on it. To deploy the changes, we used CloudFront as a proxy on top of the old app and the new front-end app. We gradually switched web requests to the new UI using a feature flag to reduce the risk of failures or outages. The transition went smoothly without major issues. As a bonus, we got all requests geolocated since they pass through the AWS CloudFront. That allowed us to control the users’ network traffic and fight against sharing accounts. Our results of the Ruby on Rails app redesign Switching to the new design made the project more attractive to users, resulting in more signups and increased satisfaction among old users. This allowed us to increase charges by 20% and revenue by 30%. The redesign expenses were paid off within the first three months after release. See below for the paid user dynamics analysis. The release date was on the 1st of February 2021. Why our approach of Ruby on Rails app redesign is cheaper and less risky Redesigning apps can be painful and distracting. The Rails assets pipeline changes often, making sticking with it turn the code into legacy quickly. Finding specialists to maintain this code without sacrificing quality on both front-end and back-end is challenging. Separating the front-end and leaving only the Rails back-end for the API makes redesigning and maintenance smoother, allowing for a diversified team with good specialists on both ends. for the front-end, improving SEO with image optimization and cache facilities out of the box. Next.js was a wise choice Acknowledges I’m grateful and proud to have worked with the following people on this project at different times: Daniel Dauwe Vadzim Jakushau Illia Pruskyi Soltan Yangibayev Svetlana Zhuravitskaya Alexey Mikitsik Also published . here

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