rails

Once you’ve built a few Hotwire controllers, you notice the same respond_to shape repeated. I extract a small helper (a concern) that yields a respond_to block and centralizes the “default HTML redirect” pattern. This keeps controllers readable and re

For a notifications dropdown, I keep the list server-rendered and let Turbo Streams keep it fresh. The dropdown content sits in a turbo_frame_tag (so you can also navigate to a full notifications page), and the unread badge is a separate small target

Turbo’s page cache is great until you have sensitive screens (account settings, billing) where the browser back button might show stale content. I handle this by setting cache-control headers and, for specific actions, disabling Turbo caching via turb

You can build rich UIs by scoping navigation to a frame (e.g., a sidebar). Links inside the sidebar update only that frame while the main content stays put. This is great for filters and settings panels.

Email issues are painful in production. Subscribe to mailer notifications and log message IDs, recipients, and durations. This gives you a lightweight audit trail without adding a heavy dependency.

Updating last_seen_at on every request creates hot rows and write amplification. Instead, track last seen in Redis and periodically flush to DB, or only write when the value meaningfully changes.

Keyboard shortcuts improve power-user workflows, but they must survive Turbo navigation. Attach on connect/disconnect, avoid global leaks, and scope shortcuts to the page/component.

Scheduling/booking is tricky. Postgres exclusion constraints prevent overlapping time ranges at the database layer—far more reliable than application checks. Rails can still validate, but the DB is the source of truth.

A good Hotwire endpoint responds to both Turbo and non-Turbo clients. Use respond_to and render a turbo stream that prepends the new record and updates flash/errors, while keeping an HTML fallback for crawlers, redirects, and manual testing.

Flash updates are common enough to deserve a first-class stream action. Defining a custom turbo-stream action keeps views tidy: instead of repeating turbo_stream.update, you can write <turbo-stream action="flash">.

Webhooks are a security boundary. Verify signatures with constant-time compare, include a timestamp window to prevent replay, and store processed event IDs to make handlers idempotent.

Hotwire forms feel “native” when invalid submissions keep you in context. Replace just the form frame with errors and keep the rest of the page intact. Return 422 so clients and caches behave correctly.