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Enlitenment

enlitenment is a Rails application template script that will lead you along the path to SQLite on Rails enlightenment.

Achieving SQLite on Rails nirvana requires 4 critical pieces:

  1. properly configured SQLite connections for optimal performance
  2. properly configured Solid Queue for background jobs
  3. properly configured Solid Cache for caching
  4. properly configured Solid Cable for web sockets
  5. properly configured Litestream for backups
  6. properly configured Solid Errors for error monitoring

The enlitenment script provides all 6 pieces, each carefully tuned to be production-ready.

Important

Testing the template script while it is private requires you copying the url from the web interface, which includes a token query param. Using the URL without that token query param results in a 404.

Usage

You can use a Rails application template script either when scaffolding a new Rails application, or you can apply the template to an existing Rails application.

To apply the template while scaffolding a new Rails application, you pass the location of the template (local or remote) using the -m or --template option to the rails new command:

rails new my-app \
  --template https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fractaledmind/enlitenment/main/template.rb

If you want to apply the template to an existing application, you use the app:template command and pass the location of the template via the LOCATION environment variable:

bin/rails app:template \
  LOCATION=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fractaledmind/enlitenment/main/template.rb

Rails accepts a URL to a remote version of the script file, so you can point directly to the template file in this repository.

Configuration

Regardless of how you apply the template, you can also configure various details of how the script will upgrade your application via environment variables.

Global vs Production Installation

You can decide whether to install the gems into all environments or just the production environment by setting the INSTALL_INTO environment variable:

INSTALL_INTO = "production" | "application"

This determines whether configuration is written to the config/application.rb file or the config/environments/production.rb file as well as whether the databases are configured for all environments or just the production environment in config/database.yml.

Skipping Sections

You can skip certain sections of the script using the SKIP_* environment variables:

Variable Default
SKIP_SOLID_QUEUE false
SKIP_SOLID_CACHE false
SKIP_SOLID_CABLE false
SKIP_LITESTREAM false
SKIP_SOLID_ERRORS false

SKIP_SOLID_QUEUE will skip the entire process of installing and configuring Solid Queue. This process consists of 10 steps, which would all be skipped if you set this variable to true:

  1. add the solid_queue gem to the Gemfile
  2. install the gem
  3. define a new database configuration
  4. add the new database configuration to all environments
  5. run the Solid Queue installation generator
  6. run the migrations for the new database
  7. configure the application to use Solid Queue in all environments with the new database
  8. add the Solid Queue plugin to Puma
  9. add the Solid Queue engine to the application
  10. mount the Solid Queue engine

SKIP_SOLID_CACHE will skip the entire process of installing and configuring Solid Cache. This process consists of 9 steps, which would all be skipped if you set this variable to true:

  1. add the solid_cache gem to the Gemfile
  2. install the gem
  3. define the new database configuration
  4. add the new database configuration to all environments
  5. run the Solid Cache installation generator
  6. run the migrations for the new database
  7. configure Solid Cache to use the new database
  8. configure Solid Cache as the cache store
  9. optionally enable the cache in development

SKIP_SOLID_CABLE will skip the entire process of installing and configuring Solid Cable. This process consists of 7 steps, which would all be skipped if you set this variable to true:

  1. add the solid_cable gem to the Gemfile
  2. install the gem
  3. define the new database configuration
  4. add the new database configuration to all environments
  5. run the Solid Cable installation generator
  6. run the migrations for the new database
  7. configure Solid Cable to use the new database

SKIP_LITESTREAM will skip the entire process of installing and configuring Litestream. This process consists of 8 steps, which would all be skipped if you set this variable to true:

  1. add the litestream gem
  2. install the gem
  3. run the Litestream installation generator
  4. add the Litestream plugin to Puma
  5. mount the Litestream engine
  6. Secure the Litestream dashboard
  7. Add a recurring task to verify Litestream backups
  8. at the end of the Rails process, configure the Litestream engine

SKIP_SOLID_ERRORS will skip the entire process of installing and configuring Solid Errors. This process consists of 10 steps, which would all be skipped if you set this variable to true:

  1. add the solid_errors gem to the Gemfile
  2. install the gem
  3. define the new database configuration
  4. add the new database configuration to all environments
  5. run the Solid Errors installation generator
  6. prepare the new database
  7. configure the application to use Solid Errors in all environments with the new database
  8. configure Solid Errors to send emails when errors occur
  9. mount the Solid Errors engine
  10. secure the Solid Errors web dashboard

Skipping Steps

For some sections, there are also certain individual steps that can be skipped:

Variable Default
SKIP_DEV_CACHE false
SKIP_LITESTREAM_CREDS false

SKIP_DEV_CACHE will skip the step of enabling the cache in development. This simply means that in step 8 of the Solid Cache configuration process, the rails dev:cache action will not be run. Similarly, SKIP_LITESTREAM_CREDS will simply skip step 5 of configuring Litestream and not uncomment the lines in the config/intializers/litestream.rb file. You will need to configure Litestream yourself by hand.

Database Configuration

When installing and configuring Solid Queue and Solid Cache, enlitenment will use a separate SQLite database for each. You can define the names for the those databases using the *_DB environment variables:

Variable Default
QUEUE_DB "queue"
CACHE_DB "cache"
CABLE_DB "cable"
ERRORS_DB "errors"

These database names will be used in the config/database.yml file to define the new database configurations as well as in the Solid Queue/Cache/Cable/Errors configuration files to ensure that both gems understand that they are supposed to read and write from these separate SQLite databases.

Web Dashboards

The script will also install and configure any related web dashboards for the components. Solid Queue uses the separate Mission Control — Jobs gem for its web dashboard, but Litestream and Solid Errors come with their own web dashboards. You can configure the route path that each will be mounted at via the *_ROUTE environment variables:

Variable Default
JOBS_ROUTE "/jobs"
LITESTREAM_ROUTE "/litestream"
ERRORS_ROUTE "/errors"

It is important that each web dashboard has at least basic security measures in place. But the different components provide different ways to secure their web dashboards. For Solid Queue, the Mission Control — Jobs gem allows you to configure the controller that the gem inherits from. For Litestream and Solid Errors, you can set a password that will be required via basic HTTP authentication to access the web dashboards. For all three, however, you could simply secure the dashboards by updating the config/routes.rb file to restrict access to the web dashboards under a route constraint, like:

authenticate :user, -> (user) { user.admin? } do
  mount SolidErrors::Engine, at: "/errors"
  mount Litestream::Engine, at: "/litestream"
  mount MissionControl::Jobs::Engine, at: "/jobs"
end

But, to ensure that the generated code is secure by default, the script provides the following environment variables to control the basic security measures that the gems provide:

Variable Default
JOBS_CONTROLLER "AdminController"
LITESTREAM_PASSWORD "lite$tr3am"
ERRORS_PASSWORD "3rr0r$"

For the JOBS_CONTROLLER in particular, if you do not have an AdminController defined in your project, the script will instead generate a MissionControl::BaseController for you with HTTP basic authentication enabled. This is simply to ensure that you cannot accidently expose the Mission Control dashboard to the public.

Solid Gems

If you want to confirm that the Solid gems have been installed and configured correctly, you can run the following commands in the Rails console and verify that the output matches the following:

> ActionCable.server.config.cable['adapter']
=> "solid_cable"
> Rails.application.config.cache_store
=> :solid_cache_store
> Rails.application.config.active_job.queue_adapter
=> :solid_queue

Reporting issues

If you run into issues running the script, please open an issue. When detailing your problem, please ensure that you provide the (relevant) contents of the following files as they were before you ran the script:

├── config
    ├── application.rb
    ├── database.yml
    ├── puma.rb
    └── routes.rb

Also, provide a git diff with the problematic diffs. This will allow us to not just improve the script, but write a regression test for this scenario so that the script never has your particular problem again.