Rails 6 setup on Mac Catalina or BigSur, with Brew

These notes should work to build a new Rails6 project, using Active Scaffold, on a Mac. Tested by D. Bulgatz using Catalina, 10.15.7 with mysql 5.7, using Brew to install Ruby, mysql, and dependencies

Basic setup of Brew and Bundler

# skip this git -C /usr/local/Homebrew/Library/Taps/homebrew/homebrew-cask fetch --unshallow
brew update
brew install node
brew install yarn

brew install rbenv
rbenv install 2.7.1
gem install bundler
Successfully installed bundler-2.2.11gem install rails -v 6.0.3.5

Installing mysql2 Gem for mysql 5.7

gem install mysql2  -v '0.5.3' -- \
--with-mysql-config /usr/local/Cellar/[email protected]/5.7.29/bin/mysql_config \
--with-cppflags=-I/usr/local/opt/[email protected]/include \
--with-ldflags=-L/usr/local/opt/[email protected]/lib

Installing mysql2 Gem for mysql 8.0 with BigSur (new Cellar location)

gem install mysql2 -v '0.5.3' -- \
 --with-mysql-lib=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mysql/8.0.27/lib \
 --with-mysql-dir=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mysql/8.0.27 \
 --with-mysql-config=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mysql/8.0.27/bin/mysql_config \
 --with-mysql-include=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mysql/8.0.27/include

Create a folder for your application

mkdir rails6app
cd rails6app/

Fix Default version of bundler

This may be necessary to not use an old/default version of bundler. It was for me.

gem update --system

Create the Rails app

setup for mysql, and with a specified version of Rails (Must be Pre 6.1)

#create the new Rails app
rails _6.0.3.5_ new myapp -d mysql

setup the application for Active Scaffold

#Add to Gemfile
gem 'active_scaffold', '3.6.0'
gem 'jquery-rails'
gem 'jquery-ui-rails' #needed for Date field searches to work

#For Export to excel, add these
gem "active_scaffold_export"
gem 'caxlsx'
gem 'caxlsx_rails'

#run Bundle install
bundle install

Create app/assets/javascripts/application.js,

The new Rails 6 architecture has moved the javascript folder and renamed it!

//= require jquery
//= require jquery_ujs
//= require_tree .
//= require active_scaffold

Precompile the application.js

config/initializers/assets.rb

Rails.application.config.assets.precompile += %w( application.js )

Add this javascript include to main layout

<%= javascript_include_tag 'application', 'data-turbolinks-track': 'reload' %>

Setup your rails app for Active Scaffold

bundle exec rails g active_scaffold:install

Create a resource (use a generator to make life easy!)

rails g active_scaffold:resource vehicle m_id:integer chassis:string type:string yr_made:string yr_ended:string doors:string drive_train:string e_mnt:string hp:integer trq:integer e_id:integer trans:string

Run the migration created to build the new resource

bundle exec rails db:migrate

Modify controller to setup for both search and field search and Export

conf.actions << :field_search
conf.field_search.link.parameters = {:kind => :field_search}
conf.field_search.link.label = 'Field Search'

#For excel export
conf.actions << :export
conf.export.default_file_format = 'xslx'

Add Stylesheets for Active Scaffold and Active Scaffold Export

app/assets/stylesheets/application.css

*= require active_scaffold
*= require active_scaffold_export

Start the Rails Server

bundle exec rails s

Navigate to newly created resource

http://localhost:3000/vehicles

Notes on Active Scaffold Export

be sure to define a to_s (to string) method in each model that will never return nil. There is a bug in the caxlxs gem that tries to determine the cell type, and it gets handed the active record object, which must respond to to_s or you will get an unhandled exception.