hotwire

In Hotwire apps, I still use Rails’ RESTful routes heavily. For destructive actions from a link, data-turbo-method='delete' is the cleanest approach: you keep semantic links where appropriate and let Turbo perform the method override. I usually pair i

You’ll eventually hit non-200 responses or network flakiness. Hook Turbo events to log failures (and optionally show a toast). This is a pragmatic production addition that helps debugging without adding heavy tooling.

For nested forms, Stimulus can manage the DOM while Rails handles the final params. Use a hidden template + a unique timestamp key. This keeps the server-rendered form simple and avoids JS frameworks.

I like optimistic UI for tiny interactions (like “star” or “follow”) because it makes the interface feel instant. The tradeoff is handling failure cleanly. I implement this with Stimulus: flip CSS + text immediately, then submit a Turbo request in the

Drag-and-drop reorder can be fancy, but the core is: user triggers a reorder action, server persists positions, and the UI updates. For simpler UIs, I skip drag-and-drop and use up/down buttons. Each click POSTs to a move_up action, updates position,

A modal that opens without focusing an input is a tiny annoyance that adds up. In Hotwire apps, modals often swap in via Turbo Frames, which means the DOM is injected after navigation. Stimulus is ideal here: attach an autofocus controller to the moda

Instead of sprinkling custom JS for notifications, I treat flash as UI state and render it via Turbo Streams. When a create/update succeeds, the controller responds to format.turbo_stream and the template uses turbo_stream.replace to swap the flash co

For notifications/messages, it’s nice to mark items read when they actually enter the viewport. IntersectionObserver + Stimulus keeps it lightweight, and Turbo streams can update badges in real time.

For small UX touches like “3 minutes ago”, I don’t want to pull in a giant date library. A Stimulus controller can use Intl.RelativeTimeFormat plus a lightweight difference calculation. The server renders the ISO timestamp (via time_tag), and the cont

When updates can happen from multiple places, model-level broadcasts keep the UI consistent across tabs without sprinkling stream logic in controllers. Use after-commit hooks so broadcasts only occur once the write is durable.

Counters (likes, votes, bookmarks) are classic UI glue. I keep the counter itself in a small partial with a stable id and update it via turbo streams on create/destroy. The controller can render a turbo_stream.replace of the counter plus (optionally)

When a form submits inside a Turbo Frame, a normal redirect can sometimes feel odd (especially if the redirect response doesn’t include the matching frame). A clean approach is to set the Turbo-Location header for Turbo requests. Turbo interprets it a