When I think about Ruby on Rails and AngularJS in the same codebase, I kind of cringe. After spending more than a year trying to reconcile how Rails plays with Angular, not only have I been unsuccessful, but I have not been satisfied with any of the suggested solutions. There is a ton of material on the numerous Rails hacks you should employ so that Rails and AngularJS feel compatible; however, I’m beginning to wonder whether this problem is being approached from the wrong direction. Instead, how can we hack AngularJS so that it plays nice with Rails?

As a Ruby on Rails developer, I want to feel that I’m writing a Rails application. I’m OK with a page refresh when I’m browsing between features. I don’t want to feel like I have to submit to the ‘Single Page Application’ paradigm. I want my JavaScript to be sprinkled on the page to augment my application. I don’t want my JavaScript to consume the entire thing. AngularJS has a tendency to pull you out of developing Rails in the Rails way.

Rails comes bundled with vanilla jQuery, which is very easy to get started with, but it is difficult to maintain. I love how Angular encapsulates, localizes and contains JavaScript functionality. It’s maintainable, modular, and easier to understand than a sputtering of jQuery files. It would be nice if I could focus on writing JavaScript for components and leave the application bit to my Rails server.

My solution to solve this problem is appropriately called Angular Sprinkles. This gem hides all of the usual setup required for a tranditional AngularJS application while dynamically generating one at run time. Developers use Rails helper methods to enable two-way binding, render directives, and call evented functions. It’s a cleaner approach to JavaScript in your Rails application. Let’s take a look.

Binding attributes

Two-way binding works right out of the box with Sprinkles. Wrapping objects with the bindable controller helper gives them the bind method.

# app/controllers/user_controller.rb class UserController < ApplicationController def show @user = bindable ( User . find ( params [ :id ] )) end end

And then in the view, you can either bind to the entire JSONified object with @user.bind , or just a single attribute with an argument.

<!-- app/views/users/show.html.erb --> <p>My name is: {{ <%= @user . bind ( :name ) %> }}</p> <input type="text" ng-model=" <%= @user . bind ( :name ) %> " />

Inlined directives

We’ll take this a step further by creating a directive to make our name blink very rapidly (obviously). Let’s first write the directive.

// app/assets/javascripts/directives/blink.js sprinkles . directive ( 'blink' , function ( $timeout ) { return { restrict : 'A' , transclude : true , scope : { period : '=' }, link : function ( scope , element ) { var opacity = 1 ; function blink () { $timeout ( function () { opacity = - ( opacity - 1 ); element . css ({ opacity : opacity }); blink (); }, scope . period ); } blink (); } }; });

And now we can include the directive in our view with the directive helper.

<!-- app/views/users/show.html.erb --> <%= directive ( :blink , period : 250 ) do %> <p>My name is: {{ <%= @user . bind ( :name ) %> }}</p> <% end %> <input type="text" ng-model=" <%= @user . bind ( :name ) %> " />

BOOM! Annoying blinking tag!

Evented JavaScript functions

Finally, it’s very important to be able to still use Angular’s built-in event bindings. For example, clicking a button and showing an alert box. Sprinkles solves this by allowing developers to inline Angular services with the service helper method.

// app/assets/javascripts/services/alert_me.js sprinkles . service ( 'alertMe' , function () { return function ( input ) { alert ( 'My name is: ' + input ); }; });

And then in the view,

<!-- app/views/users/show.html.erb --> <button ng-click=" <%= service ( :alert_me , @user . bind ( :name )) %> ">CLICK ME!</button> <input type="text" ng-model=" <%= @user . bind ( :name ) %> " />

In all of these examples there was no additional setup involved. An Angular application is generated behind the scenes, allowing the developer to keep focused on smaller JavaScript components. Focused on the… sprinkles.

Let us know what you think

Angular Sprinkles is a new approach to Angular-Rails development. It’s for those of us that love both of these great technologies and want to see them work together pleasantly. Please have a look at the gem for more information on setup and leave some feedback. We would love to know what you think.