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Getting started (development cheatsheet)

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Restarone Solutions Engineering edited this page Dec 14, 2025 · 23 revisions

Running the app

Want to follow along these steps with a video? See here: https://youtu.be/dNCPZhJ1t9E

clone the project

git clone git@github.com:restarone/violet_rails.git
cd violet_rails

ensure docker is installed

https://www.docker.com/get-started/

build the project

docker-compose build
docker-compose up
docker attach solutions_app

create the database

To see what data was seeded, view the seeds file in db/seeds.rb

docker-compose run --rm solutions_app rails db:create
docker-compose run --rm solutions_app rails db:migrate
docker-compose run --rm solutions_app rails db:seed

Precompile assets

this step needs to be done only once and should take anywhere between 5 - 20 minutes to complete.

docker-compose run --rm solutions_app rails assets:precompile

visit the app

visit localhost:80, lvh.me:5250 or localhost:5250 to see your app!

  • To Login, visit lvh.me:5250/admin use the following credentials (created by seeds.rb)
  • user: violet@rails.com
  • password: 123456

why are there 3 ways to access the app?

localhost: with Nginx load balancing

lvh.me:5250: for testing subdomains, eg: violet.lvh.me:5250

localhost:5250 : for accessing the puma server directly

domain admin vs subdomain admin

There are 2 admin tiers. Domain admins (aka global admin) can control all the subdomains in an app. Subdomain admins are confined to managing their own subdomain.

  • to access the subdomain admin, visit lvh.me:5250/admin or subdomain.lvh.me:5250/admin
  • to access domain admin visit lvh.me:5250/sysadmin

common commands

running a console

docker-compose run --rm solutions_app rails c

Test commands

before running test commands, ensure that the test database is created:

docker-compose run --rm solutions_test rails db:create
docker-compose run --rm solutions_test rails db:migrate

running the full test suite on a pristine database

./clean_run_tests.sh

running the rails test suite

docker-compose run --rm solutions_test rails test
# or
./run_tests.sh

run a single test

docker-compose run --rm solutions_test rails test path/to/test

Setting/overriding ENV variables in development

Create a file to set the variables at the application root called .env.development. Since we are using docker in development, the following variable set will work right out of the box. Copy paste it into your .env.development file.

RAILS_ENV=development
DATABASE_HOST=solutions_db
DATABASE_USERNAME=postgres
DATABASE_PASSWORD=password
DATABASE_NAME=r_solutions_development
DATABASE_PORT=5432
APP_HOST=localhost
REDIS_URL=redis://solutions_redis:6379/12
RACK_TIMEOUT_SERVICE_TIMEOUT=200

Environment variables are slightly different for each environment, the ones that are maintained by Restarone are checked into version control: Github CI configuration file or the local .env.test file if you want to see the latest variables the app is using.

please refrain from committing the changes you make to your .env.development file (unless you are introducing a new feature and adding a variable)

debugging with byebug/pry

Make sure you have docker-compose up running the app in a separate terminal window and run

docker attach solutions_app

Now you will see your rails log and it will let you use byebug/pry when you hit your breakpoints

sidekiq logs

to attach to sidekiq to read logs or hit a breakpoint:

docker attach solutions_sidekiq

rake tasks

Since Violet is multi-tenant, tasks need to run on each schema. Do accomplish this, you will need to iterate over each subdomain and open an execution context inside each of them:

  desc "example task"

  task :my_task => [:environment] do 
    subdomains = Subdomain.all_with_public_schema
    subdomains.each do |subdomain|
      Apartment::Tenant.switch subdomain.name do
          # ... your code here
      end
    end
  end

example: https://github.com/restarone/violet_rails/blob/master/lib/tasks/maintenance.rake

catching emails

To view the emails sent by the app in development mode, we use mailcatcher. Visit the following URL to see what emails have been sent from the app:

http://localhost:1080/

Clean up (gem cache clear)

teardown, further reading: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34658836/docker-is-in-volume-in-use-but-there-arent-any-docker-containers

docker-compose stop solutions_app \                                                                                                                                                              
&& docker-compose rm -f solutions_app \
&& docker-compose build \
&& docker-compose up -d solutions_app

Web console stuff

To view application routes: visit http://somesubdomain.lvh.me:5250/rails/info/routes

Staging deployment cheatsheet

cleaning out the staging database

connect to psql

psql -h ec2-3-83-199-128.compute-1.amazonaws.com -p 5432 -d postgres -U postgres

kill existing connections

REVOKE CONNECT ON DATABASE violet_staging FROM public;

SELECT pg_terminate_backend(pg_stat_activity.pid)
FROM pg_stat_activity
WHERE pg_stat_activity.datname = 'violet_staging';

capistrano deploy tips

If you are running parts of the app outside of docker (ie; capistrano deploy), you will need to specify a local postgres DB connection that is available for activerecord to hook into. Temporarily replace the contents of database.yml with the following (replace the database username and password with the credentials for your local postgres database:

default: &default
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  # For details on connection pooling, see Rails configuration guide
  # https://guides.rubyonrails.org/configuring.html#database-pooling
  pool: <%= ENV.fetch("RAILS_MAX_THREADS") { 5 } %>

development:
  <<: *default
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  database: solutions_development
  username: postgres
  password: postgres

test:
  <<: *default
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  database: solutions_development
  username: postgres
  password: postgres

staging:
  <<: *default
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  database: solutions_development
  username: postgres
  password: postgres

production:
  <<: *default
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  database: solutions_development
  username: postgres
  password: postgres

clear assets from docker

docker-compose run --rm solutions_app rails assets:clobber

deploy to environment

BRANCH=branch bundle exec cap staging deploy

Developing your application on Violet Rails

See here: https://github.com/restarone/violet_rails/wiki/Moving-fast-with-Violet-Rails;-Rapidly-Building-your-MVP

Using the Violet Rails template as a base

To use the application as a starting point, you will need to make a few changes to the docker configuration. To start, clone the repo

git clone git@github.com:restarone/violet_rails.git

follow this PR and make the necessary changes to the docker config: https://github.com/restarone/violet_rails/pull/290 and then change the docker commands to the names you specified in docker-compose.yml

docker-compose build
docker-compose up
docker-compose run --rm app rails db:create
docker-compose run --rm test rails db:create
docker-compose run --rm app rails db:migrate
docker-compose run --rm test rails db:migrate
# make sure docker-compose up is working and run this test: 
docker-compose run --rm test rails test test/controllers/admin/sidekiq_controller_test.rb

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