Avo Is a Framework for Creating Ruby on Rails Admin Panels

Running in Production

In this episode of Running in Production, Adrian Marin goes over building a Ruby on Rails admin framework. It’s hosted on Heroku and has been available since late 2020.

Adrian talks about building a Rails engine, using Stripe Checkout, building the admin out with Hotwire Turbo, using View Component, creating a very automated CI / CD pipeline to publish the gem and much more.

Topics Include

• 6:38 – Motivation for using Ruby on Rails
• 8:57 – The gem does phone home on a 1 hour interval
• 11:33 – The gem is using Hotwire Turbo but the product site is not
• 13:10 – Handling billing with Stripe’s Checkout page and a few Rails gems
• 16:43 – Publishing a Rails engine with its own assets
• 21:10 – Using Hotwire Turbo to build the admin dashboard
• 26:30 – What it was like migrating the app from Vue to Turbo
• 31:49 – Using View Component to help improve Rails partial performance
• 39:21 – Postgres is being used as the database and Redis for caching
• 42:30 – What is Hotjar, how it’s being used and extracting features
• 46:36 – From Notion to Linear to using GitHub to help manage the project
• 49:44 – Using Heroku for hosting and what delayed job is being used for
• 54:55 – What it’s like deploying the site and the gem
• 1:01:19 – Performing database backups? Maybe, maybe not!
• 1:03:57 – Best tips? Start building and launch as soon as possible
• 1:06:06 – The gem has an open source version that’s very usable
• 1:07:03 – Check out https://avohq.io/ and Adrian is on Twitter

Links

📄 References

• https://guides.rubyonrails.org/engines.html
• https://github.com/avo-hq/avo
• https://world.hey.com/dhh/building-basecamp-4-405a347f
• https://viewcomponent.org/
• https://www.notion.so/

⚙️ Tech Stack

• rails →
• ruby →
• bugsnag →
• docker →
• github-actions →
• heroku →
• hotjar →
• mailgun →
• open-source →
• postgres →
• redis →
• stripe →
• tailwindcss →
• turbo →

🛠 Libraries Used

• https://hotwire.dev/
• https://github.com/alpinejs/alpine
• https://github.com/heartcombo/devise
• https://github.com/collectiveidea/delayed_job
• https://github.com/excid3/prefixed_ids
• https://github.com/github/view_component

Support the Show

This episode does not have a sponsor and this podcast is a labor of love. If you want to support the show, the best way to do it is to purchase one of my courses or suggest one to a friend.

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