NOTICE
This tutorial is out of date and may not work for you. I have written a new post based on my experience using Rails and TailwindCSS over the last few months that you can find here. Thanks for reading! 😄
Tutorial
For the purpose of this tutorial, we will assume you have Ruby and the Rails gem installed. Please visit the Getting Started with Rails Guide if you do not.
Create a new Rails project
rails new rails_tailwind --skip-coffee --webpack -d postgresql
cd rails_tailwind
rails db:create
This will create a new Rails project for you with webpack and Postgres configured for you and create our databases. We will not use coffeescript, which is why we add the --skip-coffee
flag. You can also omit the -d postgresql
flag if you like, but if you want to deploy to something like Heroku, I would recommend adding it. If you keep the Postgres flag, make sure you have Postgres installed and it is running. You can install Postgres on macOS by running brew install postgresql && brew services start postgresql
Running Rails and Webpack
You need to run the Rails server and webpack-dev-server in two terminal tabs/windows unless you use Docker or a gem like Foreman.
For now, we will just create two terminal windows. In one window, run:
rails s
and in the other:
./bin/webpack-dev-server
You should see rails welcome page if you navigate to localhost:3000
in your browser.
Generate a Home controller
In order to see the Tailwind styles that we will integrate later, we at minimum need a controller and view.
rails generate controller Home index
You can remove the generated JS, SCSS, and helper file, we won't be needing them.
rm app/helpers/home_helper.rb app/assets/javascripts/home.js app/assets/stylesheets/home.scss
Configure your routes
Change your config/routes.rb
file to:
# frozen_string_literal: true
Rails.application.routes.draw do
root 'home#index'
resources :home, only: :index
end
Restart your Rails server, and now you should see the following on localhost:3000
Install Tailwind CSS
Run the following command in your terminal:
yarn add tailwindcss --dev
This should add the Tailwind package to your package.json
.
To create a custom config file, you can run:
./node_modules/.bin/tailwind init
This should create a tailwind.config.js
file at the root of your project. This file can be used to customize the Tailwind defaults. Read more here
Next, add the following two lines to postcss.config.js
require('tailwindcss'),
require('autoprefixer'),
Your postcss.config.js
file should now look like this:
module.exports = {
plugins: [
require('autoprefixer'),
require('postcss-import'),
require('tailwindcss'),
require('postcss-flexbugs-fixes'),
require('postcss-preset-env')({
autoprefixer: {
flexbox: 'no-2009'
},
stage: 3
})
]
}
Configure Tailwind
There are a few ways you can do this but this is my personal preference.
Remove the assets folder:
rm -rf app/assets
Rename the app/javascript
directory to app/frontend
:
mv app/javascript app/frontend
Tell webpacker to use this new folder by changing the source_path in config/webpacker.yml
from: source_path: app/javascript
to source_path: app/frontend
.
Next, we need to setup our stylesheets:
touch app/frontend/packs/stylesheets.css
Paste the following into our new stylesheets.css
file. This is straight from the tailwind docs
@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;
Add the following line in app/frontend/packs/application.js
:
import './stylesheets.css'
The last step is to tell Rails to use our packs. In app/views/layouts/application.html.erb
, change:
<%= stylesheet_link_tag 'application', media: 'all', 'data-turbolinks-track': 'reload' %>
<%= javascript_include_tag 'application', 'data-turbolinks-track': 'reload' %>
to:
<%= stylesheet_pack_tag 'stylesheets', 'data-turbolinks-track': 'reload' %>
<%= javascript_pack_tag 'application', 'data-turbolinks-track': 'reload' %>
Restart the Rails server and webpack-dev-server and you should now see the following on localhost:3000
Tailwind should now be working so lets tweak our views to see some Tailwind goodness.
Update views to use TailwindCSS
In app/views/layouts/application.html.erb
change:
<body>
<%= yield %>
</body>
to:
<body class="min-h-screen bg-gray-100">
<div class="container mx-auto">
<%= yield %>
</div>
</body>
and in app/views/home/index.html.erb
change:
<h1>Home#index</h1>
<p>Find me in app/views/home/index.html.erb</p>
to:
<section class="py-8 text-center">
<h1 class="text-5xl mb-2">Ruby on Rails + TailwindCSS</h1>
<p class="text-xl mb-8">❤️ A match made in heaven️️ ❤️</p>
<a href="https://tailwindcss.com" class="bg-teal-500 hover:bg-teal-700 text-white font-bold py-4 px-8 rounded" target="_blank">Tailwind Docs</a>
</section>
You should now see the following page when you navigate to localhost:3000
And now you have Tailwind CSS working in your Rails app!
If you are interested in using PurgeCSS to remove unused styles, I recommend checking out GoRails Episode #294
Happy coding!
Top comments (11)
@andew does your @apply feature working on this setup?
Doesn't work for me. Trying with this:
It was working. Might be time to update this post. I used it today but did something slightly different bc of scss
I created a new post that should work. Check it out here: dev.to/andrewmcodes/ruby-on-rails-...
Is this the way it should be done for Rails versions before 6?
I don't think you should put
stylesheets.css
inside/packs
folder, It will be considered a "pack" and will be compiled tostylesheets-[hash].js
.Can you elaborate, please? I do this bc it’s the “rails way” a typically only find pain when I stray from this path. What do you prefer to do?
/packs
Is a special folder that contains the entry points to your "modules" (webpacker will bundle up each file inside/packs
with its dependencies into single file).So, If you have
packs/application.js
it will be bundled up with its dependencies and become available asexample.com/packs/js/application-[hash].js
(Find that in the<head>
of your website).If you check your deployment, you will find
example.com/packs/stylesheets-[hash].css
which is basically useless because your styles are already bundled toexample.com/packs/css/application-[hash].css
because of theimport './stylesheets.css'
you have inapp/javascript/packs/application.js
already.Having
stylesheets.css
insidepacks
might be just "useless" now. But, It might pile up with time or you might even have your Reactsrc
folder inside there which basically mean you will have webpacker compiling your app in a loop that might cause 40+ minutes when deploying (I learned the hard way 😅).Great!
Hi, what is your personal experience with Tailwind? What are the key differences from the others
Could you describe what you mean by “others”?
Tailwind is not a framework like bootstrap or materialize. It’s a utility framework and best suited for someone who is very comfortable with css, whereas css frameworks provide prebuilt components to get you up and running quickly (in my opinion of course). I love css and tailwind gives me total control + the ability to pull out components like cards. I can move fast, it’s easy to experiment and then pull out reusable components, and it can help you get better at css!