I don’t mean to spam the forums with three posts in a row, but I’ve been having a hell of a time using javascript or css libraries to work in a Rails 7 project. I realise I’m new and not very experienced, but I don’t think I’m setting the bar too high for a template generated app configuration to not be completely shambolic. (Sorry, but I needed to vent.)
This time it’s about bootstrap javascript not working out of the box.
My Rails 7 project was created with the -c bootstrap option, so (from what I learned) esbuild is being used.
My application.js file contained:
import "@hotwired/turbo-rails"
import "./controllers"
import * as bootstrap from "bootstrap"
import jquery from 'jquery'
window.$ = jquery
I believe I added the last two lines at some point in the process of trying to get jQuery to work (honestly I’ve mucked about so much with these issues that I can’t even remember) but otherwise these were generated by the template. I can confirm jQuery was imported properly, using the js console in Chrome dev tools.
My application had a bootstrap-styled page with collapsing dropdown menus, but clicking on it would not trigger the dropdown effect. It turns out (as I checked in dev tools console) that the dropdown function was not being imported properly, and after much searching and time wastage, I got it to work by replacing the (template-generated) * import in application.js to import "bootstrap/js/dist/dropdown" to import just that particular function.
So where am I going wrong? Shouldn’t I expect the bootstrap js library to be configured correctly by the template? Did my import of jquery mess up something?
I know a kind soul in another thread suggested using something called UJS but I don’t have the time or energy right now to start looking into a new (old?) approach.
If I had another couple of weeks, I think I would’ve dropped Rails altogether and tried to find a slightly less insane python-based framework and start over, but unfortunately I’m stuck with it. (I know I’m being unfair, I’m sure it’s good if you know what you’re doing… needed to vent again.)