Breaking Up with the Asset Pipeline

Agilion's First Single Page Apps

The DHH Rails Way

• Turbolinks
• Caching
• The Asset Pipeline

The UX Still Sucked

SIngle Page Apps

Gem install Javascript

Manifest Disaster

• Literally just concatenating files where required
  
• Must organize code to ensure everything is in proper place
  

//= jquery
//= underscore
//= backbone
//= require my_app_setup
//= require_tree models/
//= require_tree collections/
//= require_tree templates/
//= require_tree views/
//= require_tree routers/
//= require my_app_start

Namespacing

//my_app_setup.js
window.App = {};
App.Models = {};
App.Collections = {};
App.Controllers = {};
App.Routes = {};
App.Views = {};

Authentication

AuthenTication

Development is SLOW

The request response cycle is terrible for maintaining application state,
and the asset pipeline is terrible for building JavaScript Single Page Apps.

Small EXPERIMENT

Seperate Repositories

Treating the UI as its own application

AppAPI/
  .git
  Gemfile
  Rakefile
  app/
AppUI/
  .git
  package.json
  bower.json
  gulpfile.js
  app/

JS Tech Stack

• Backbone
• NPM
• Bower
• Browserify
• Gulp.js

NPM JS Package Management

Development/build tools dependencies

Like development group Gemfile dependencies

//package.json
{
  "name": "MyAppUI",
  "description": "UI for MyApp",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "private": true,
  "dependencies": {
    "gulp": "~3.8.6",
    "gulp-concat": "~2.3.4",
    "browserify": "~5.9.1",
    "less": "~1.7.4",
    "bower": "~1.3.8",
    "browser-sync": "~1.3.2"
  }
}

npm install

Bower JS Package Management

• Front end package dependencies
  
• Often published by JS library authors
  
• Like Gemfile with require: false
  

// bower.json
{
  "name": "MyAppUI",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "private": true,
  "dependencies": {
    "jquery": "~2.0.3",
    "bootstrap": "~3.0.3",
    "backbone": "~1.1.2"
  }
}

bower install

Browserify Modules

• Transpiles CJS Modules to browser compatible JavaScript
• Based on Common JS and Node Modules
  
• Replaces Manifest Files
  
• One JS request, even in Development
  

// app/collections/users.js
var Backbone = require('backbone'),
    User     = require('./app/models/user');

module.export = Backbone.Collection.extend({
  model: User
});

http://browserify.org/

Alternatives: require.js, ES6 Module Transpiler

Source Maps

• Concatenation is transparent
  
• You see your original source files, by file name, in:
• Dev tools debugger
• Error stack traces 
• Maps compiled JS/CSS to the source on disk

Gulp config

var gulp       = require('gulp'),
    browserify = require('browserify'),
    gconcat    = require('gulp-concat');

gulp.task('javascript', function() {
  gulp.src('application.js')
    .pipe(browserify({debug: !gulp.env.production}))
    .pipe(gconcat('build.js'))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./dist/'));
});

gulp.task('default', function() {
  gulp.watch('js/**', ['js']);
});

gulp javascript
gulp

http://gulpjs.com/

Alternatives: Grunt, Broccoli

BrowserSync

var gulp        = require('gulp'),
    browserify  = require('browserify'),
    gconcat     = require('gulp-concat'),
    browserSync = require('browser-sync');

gulp.task('javascript', function() {
  gulp.src('application.js')
    .pipe(browserify({debug: !gulp.env.production}))
    .pipe(gconcat('build.js'))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./dist/'))
    .pipe(browserSync.reload({stream: true, once: true});
});

gulp.task('browser-sync', function() {
  browserSync({server: { baseDir: "./", port: 4200 }});
});

gulp.task('default', ['browser-sync'], function() {
  gulp.watch('js/**', ['js']);
});

http://www.browsersync.io/

Alternatives: Live Reload

What about deployment?

Heroku & CORS

2 Heroku Apps w/ Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

Your front end application deserves to be treated as an application in its own right,
not relegated to the asset directory.

Single Page Apps on Rails Redux

JS Tech Stack

Rails::APi

AUthentication

Finally a real RESTful API!

// POST /api/token
{
  grant_type: "password",
  username: "alan@agilion.com",
  password: "correct horse battery staple"
}

// response 200
{
  access_token: 'sdlkyuskdfyiwesdfkljsdf',
  token_type: 'Bearer',
  expires_in: 30.days,
  user_id: 1
}

GET /api/protected
Headers: 'Authorization': "Bearer #{access_token}"

Rails - Active Model Serializers

class UsersController < ApplicationController
  def show
    render json: User.find(params[:id]), serializer: UserSerializer
  end
end

class UserSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
  attributes :id, :name, :email, :is_admin
  
  def is_admin
    object.admin?
  end
end

{
  "user": {
    { 
      "id"      : 1,
      "name"    : "alan",
      "email"   : "alan@agilion.com",
      "is_admin": true
    }
  }
}

Better Deployments

Heroku & Proxy

2 Heroku apps with Nginx Proxy

Custom Deploys

Development Is Fast

Oh yeah I would never go back by choice.
- Pete Brown

Feels Good

Development is Faster*

*Or at least it feels faster

Rails is Beautiful Again

Decoupled Deploys

API First development

Purple Farts Slide

We have the opportunity to build a synergistic, mobile enabled, web platform at an accelerated pace with a dynamic user experience years ahead of its time.