@hotwired/turbo-rails

What is @hotwired/turbo-rails?

@hotwired/turbo-rails is a package that integrates Turbo, a part of the Hotwire framework, with Ruby on Rails applications. Turbo is designed to speed up web applications by reducing the need for full page reloads and enabling partial updates to the DOM. It provides tools for handling navigation, form submissions, and real-time updates efficiently.

What are @hotwired/turbo-rails's main functionalities?

Turbo Drive

Turbo Drive makes navigation faster by using AJAX to load new pages and update the DOM without a full page reload. This event listener logs a message when Turbo Drive is enabled.

document.addEventListener('turbo:load', () => { console.log('Turbo Drive is enabled!'); });

Turbo Frames

Turbo Frames allow you to update only a portion of the page by loading content into a specific frame. This example shows how to define a Turbo Frame that loads content from a specified source.

<turbo-frame id="frame_id" src="/path/to/content"></turbo-frame>

Turbo Streams

Turbo Streams enable real-time updates to the DOM by defining actions like append, prepend, replace, etc. This example appends a new message to the target element with the ID 'messages'.

<turbo-stream action="append" target="messages"><template><div>New message</div></template></turbo-stream>

Turbo Forms

Turbo Forms enhance form submissions by handling them via AJAX, allowing for partial page updates. This example shows a form that will be submitted using Turbo.

<form data-turbo="true" action="/submit" method="post"><input type="text" name="name"><button type="submit">Submit</button></form>

Other packages similar to @hotwired/turbo-rails

pjax

pjax (pushState + AJAX) is a jQuery plugin that uses AJAX and pushState to deliver fast, single-page app-like experiences. It is similar to Turbo Drive in that it loads new content without a full page reload, but it is more limited in scope and relies on jQuery.

unpoly

Unpoly is a framework for creating fast and flexible frontends. It allows partial page updates and offers features similar to Turbo Frames and Turbo Streams. Unpoly is more feature-rich and flexible but also more complex to set up compared to @hotwired/turbo-rails.

stimulus

Stimulus is a modest JavaScript framework for enhancing static HTML. While it is often used alongside Turbo, it can also be used independently to add interactivity to web pages. Stimulus focuses on connecting JavaScript behavior to HTML elements, whereas Turbo focuses on optimizing navigation and form submissions.

README

Turbo

Turbo gives you the speed of a single-page web application without having to write any JavaScript. Turbo accelerates links and form submissions without requiring you to change your server-side generated HTML. It lets you carve up a page into independent frames, which can be lazy-loaded and operate as independent components. And finally, helps you make partial page updates using just HTML and a set of CRUD-like container tags. These three techniques reduce the amount of custom JavaScript that many web applications need to write by an order of magnitude. And for the few dynamic bits that are left, you're invited to finish the job with Stimulus.

On top of accelerating web applications, Turbo was built from the ground-up to form the foundation of hybrid native applications. Write the navigational shell of your Android or iOS app using the standard platform tooling, then seamlessly fill in features from the web, following native navigation patterns. Not every mobile screen needs to be written in Swift or Kotlin to feel native. With Turbo, you spend less time wrangling JSON, waiting on app stores to approve updates, or reimplementing features you've already created in HTML.

Turbo is a language-agnostic framework written in JavaScript, but this gem builds on top of those basics to make the integration with Rails as smooth as possible. You can deliver turbo updates via model callbacks over Action Cable, respond to controller actions with native navigation or standard redirects, and render turbo frames with helpers and layout-free responses.

Navigate with Turbo Drive

Turbo is a continuation of the ideas from the previous Turbolinks framework, and the heart of that past approach lives on as Turbo Drive. When installed, Turbo automatically intercepts all clicks on <a href> links to the same domain. When you click an eligible link, Turbo prevents the browser from following it. Instead, Turbo changes the browser’s URL using the History API, requests the new page using fetch, and then renders the HTML response.

During rendering, Turbo replaces the current <body> element outright and merges the contents of the <head> element. The JavaScript window and document objects, and the <html> element, persist from one rendering to the next.

Whereas Turbolinks previously just dealt with links, Turbo can now also process form submissions and responses. This means the entire flow in the web application is wrapped into Turbo, making all the parts fast. No more need for data-remote=true.

Turbo Drive can be disabled on a per-element basis by annotating the element or any of its ancestors with data-turbo="false". If you want Turbo Drive to be disabled by default, then you can adjust your import like this:

import "@hotwired/turbo-rails"
Turbo.session.drive = false

Then you can use data-turbo="true" to enable Drive on a per-element basis.

See documentation.

Decompose with Turbo Frames

Turbo reinvents the old HTML technique of frames without any of the drawbacks that lead to developers abandoning it. With Turbo Frames, you can treat a subset of the page as its own component, where links and form submissions replace only that part. This removes an entire class of problems around partial interactivity that before would have required custom JavaScript.

It also makes it dead easy to carve a single page into smaller pieces that can all live on their own cache timeline. While the bulk of the page might easily be cached between users, a small personalized toolbar perhaps cannot. With Turbo::Frames, you can designate the toolbar as a frame, which will be lazy-loaded automatically by the publicly-cached root page. This means simpler pages, easier caching schemes with fewer dependent keys, and all without needing to write a lick of custom JavaScript.

This gem provides a turbo_frame_tag helper to create those frames.

For instance:

<%# app/views/todos/show.html.erb %>
<%= turbo_frame_tag @todo do %>
  <p><%= @todo.description %></p>

  <%= link_to 'Edit this todo', edit_todo_path(@todo) %>
<% end %>

<%# app/views/todos/edit.html.erb %>
<%= turbo_frame_tag @todo do %>
  <%= render "form" %>

  <%= link_to 'Cancel', todo_path(@todo) %>
<% end %>

When the user clicks on the Edit this todo link, as a direct response to this user interaction, the turbo frame will be automatically replaced with the one in the edit.html.erb page.

See documentation.

A note on custom layouts

In order to render turbo frame requests without the application layout, Turbo registers a custom layout method. If your application uses custom layout resolution, you have to make sure to return "turbo_rails/frame" (or false for TurboRails < 1.4.0) for turbo frame requests:

layout :custom_layout

def custom_layout
  return "turbo_rails/frame" if turbo_frame_request?

  # ... your custom layout logic

If you are using a custom, but "static" layout,

layout "some_static_layout"

you have to change it to a layout method in order to conditionally return "turbo_rails/frame" for turbo frame requests:

layout :custom_layout

def custom_layout
  return "turbo_rails/frame" if turbo_frame_request?

  "some_static_layout"

Come Alive with Turbo Streams

Partial page updates that are delivered asynchronously over a web socket connection is the hallmark of modern, reactive web applications. With Turbo Streams, you can get all of that modern goodness using the existing server-side HTML you're already rendering to deliver the first page load. With a set of simple CRUD container tags, you can send HTML fragments over the web socket (or in response to direct interactions), and see the page change in response to new data. Again, no need to construct an entirely separate API, no need to wrangle JSON, no need to reimplement the HTML construction in JavaScript. Take the HTML you're already making, wrap it in an update tag, and, voila, your page comes alive.

With this Rails integration, you can create these asynchronous updates directly in response to your model changes. Turbo uses Active Jobs to provide asynchronous partial rendering and Action Cable to deliver those updates to subscribers.

This gem provides a turbo_stream_from helper to create a turbo stream.

<%# app/views/todos/show.html.erb %>
<%= turbo_stream_from dom_id(@todo) %>

<%# Rest of show here %>

Testing Turbo Stream Broadcasts

Receiving server-generated Turbo Broadcasts requires a connected Web Socket. Views that render <turbo-cable-stream-source> elements with the #turbo_stream_from view helper incur a slight delay before they're ready to receive broadcasts. In System Tests, that delay can disrupt Capybara's built-in synchronization mechanisms that wait for or assert on content that's broadcast over Web Sockets. For example, consider a test that navigates to a page and then immediately asserts that broadcast content is present:

test "renders broadcasted Messages" do
  message = Message.new content: "Hello, from Action Cable"

  visit "/"
  click_link "All Messages"
  message.save! # execute server-side code to broadcast a Message

  assert_text message.content
end

If the call to Message#save! executes quickly enough, it might beat-out any <turbo-cable-stream-source> elements rendered by the call to click_link "All Messages".

To wait for any disconnected <turbo-cable-stream-source> elements to connect, call #connect_turbo_cable_stream_sources:

 test "renders broadcasted Messages" do
   message = Message.new content: "Hello, from Action Cable"

   visit "/"
   click_link "All Messages"
+  connect_turbo_cable_stream_sources
   message.save! # execute server-side code to broadcast a Message

   assert_text message.content
 end

By default, calls to #visit will wait for all <turbo-cable-stream-source> elements to connect. You can control this by modifying the config.turbo.test_connect_after_actions. For example, to wait after calls to #click_link, add the following to config/environments/test.rb:

# config/environments/test.rb

config.turbo.test_connect_after_actions << :click_link

To disable automatic connecting, set the configuration to []:

# config/environments/test.rb

config.turbo.test_connect_after_actions = []

See documentation.

Installation

This gem is automatically configured for applications made with Rails 7+ (unless --skip-hotwire is passed to the generator). But if you're on Rails 6, you can install it manually:

1. Add the turbo-rails gem to your Gemfile: gem 'turbo-rails'
2. Run ./bin/bundle install
3. Run ./bin/rails turbo:install

Running turbo:install will install through NPM or Bun if a JavaScript runtime is used in the application. Otherwise the asset pipeline version is used. To use the asset pipeline version, you must have importmap-rails installed first and listed higher in the Gemfile.

If you're using node and need to use the cable consumer, you can import cable (import { cable } from "@hotwired/turbo-rails"), but ensure that your application actually uses the members it imports when using this style (see turbo-rails#48).

The Turbo instance is automatically assigned to window.Turbo upon import:

import "@hotwired/turbo-rails"

Usage

You can watch the video introduction to Hotwire, which focuses extensively on demonstrating Turbo in a Rails demo. Then you should familiarize yourself with Turbo handbook to understand Drive, Frames, and Streams in-depth. Finally, dive into the code documentation by starting with Turbo::FramesHelper, Turbo::StreamsHelper, Turbo::Streams::TagBuilder, and Turbo::Broadcastable.

Note that in development, the default Action Cable adapter is the single-process async adapter. This means that turbo updates are only broadcast within that same process. So you can't start bin/rails console and trigger Turbo broadcasts and expect them to show up in a browser connected to a server running in a separate bin/dev or bin/rails server process. Instead, you should use the web-console when needing to manaually trigger Turbo broadcasts inside the same process. Add "console" to any action or "<%= console %>" in any view to make the web console appear.

RubyDoc Documentation

For the API documentation covering this gem's classes and packages, visit the RubyDoc page. Note that this documentation is updated automatically from the main branch, so it may contain features that are not released yet.

• Turbo Drive Helpers
• Turbo Frames Helpers
• Turbo Streams View Helpers
• Turbo Streams Broadcast Methods
• Turbo Streams Channel
• Turbo Native Navigation
• Turbo Test Assertions
• Turbo Integration Test Assertions
• Turbo Broadcastable Test Helper
• Turbo System Test Helper

Compatibility with Rails UJS

Turbo can coexist with Rails UJS, but you need to take a series of upgrade steps to make it happen. See the upgrading guide.

Testing

The Turbo::TestAssertions concern provides Turbo Stream test helpers that assert the presence or absence ofs s <turbo-stream> elements in a rendered fragment of HTML. Turbo::TestAssertions are automatically included in ActiveSupport::TestCase and depend on the presence of rails-dom-testing assertions.

The Turbo::TestAssertions::IntegrationTestAssertions are built on top of Turbo::TestAssertions, and add support for passing a status: keyword. They are automatically included in ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest.

The Turbo::Broadcastable::TestHelper concern provides Action Cable-aware test helpers that assert that <turbo-stream> elements were or were not broadcast over Action Cable. Turbo::Broadcastable::TestHelper is automatically included in ActiveSupport::TestCase.

Rendering Outside of a Request

Turbo utilizes ActionController::Renderer to render templates and partials outside the context of the request-response cycle. If you need to render a Turbo-aware template, partial, or component, use ActionController::Renderer:

ApplicationController.renderer.render template: "posts/show", assigns: { post: Post.first } # => "<html>…"
PostsController.renderer.render :show, assigns: { post: Post.first } # => "<html>…"

As a shortcut, you can also call render directly on the controller class itself:

ApplicationController.render template: "posts/show", assigns: { post: Post.first } # => "<html>…"
PostsController.render :show, assigns: { post: Post.first } # => "<html>…"

Development

Run the tests with ./bin/test.

Using local Turbo version

Often you might want to test changes made locally to Turbo lib itself. To package your local development version of Turbo you can use yarn link feature:

cd <local-turbo-dir>
yarn link

cd <local-turbo-rails-dir>
yarn link @hotwired/turbo

# Build the JS distribution files...
yarn build
# ...and commit the changes

Now you can reference your version of turbo-rails in your Rails projects packaged with your local version of Turbo.

Contributing

Having a way to reproduce your issue will help people confirm, investigate, and ultimately fix your issue. You can do this by providing an executable test case. To make this process easier, we have prepared an executable bug report Rails application for you to use as a starting point.

This template includes the boilerplate code to set up a System Test case. Copy the content of the template into a .rb file and make the necessary changes to demonstrate the issue. You can execute it by running ruby the_file.rb in your terminal. If all goes well, you should see your test case failing.

You can then share your executable test case as a gist or paste the content into the issue description.

License

Turbo is released under the MIT License.