A Simple Stimulus tabs Controller

Stimulus is one of the core parts of the “Hotwire” stack, the Rails 7 way to build responsive frontends. Time and time again, I’m blown away by what we can build with 99% HTML, and a few sprinkles of Stimulus-powered Javascript.

This article is a pretty short one — it’s mostly just code for the Stimulus controller, but I still think it’s valuable as a reference. It’s part of a longer-term goal of mine to build a collection of Stimulus controllers on the blog. Then, you’ll be able to grab the ones you need for your Rails apps, without having to hunt around for them on different websites and GitHub repos.

One important thing for me is sharing the code for Stimulus controllers directly, rather than packaging them into a gem. This way, you can grab the raw code, understand it, and edit it to suit your app.

Hope you enjoy this article! And keep an eye out for more coming your way 😉

→ ✨ Writing better StimulusJS controllers (boringrails.com)

Another week, another BoringRails article 🤭. Trust me though, this article is top-tier. It goes deep into writing clean, composable Stimulus controllers, something that, for many, will be a new way of thinking.

Controller bloat seems like a real problem for a lot of Rails devs — if you’re not careful, you can end up with heaps of super-specific controllers for niche behaviours (toggle-hidden, toggle-active, toggle-enabled etc.). Matt Swanson flips that on its head and shows you how to write generic controllers that you use across your entire app.

→ 🤖 Taking the most out of Stimulus.js (thoughtbot.com)

This article is the perfect “jumelage”_{(french: ‘pairing’)} to the one above. Instead of going deep (like the BoringRails article), this one goes wide and walks you through different patterns to help write better Stimulus controllers.

It contains incredible amounts of tactic, hard-won knowledge. It’s got great examples for the Classes API, Events, writing composable controllers, and more.

→ ✍️ Practical Stimulus: Capture User Input (akshaykhot.com)

I’ve always found the best way to learn something new, is by diving in and tinkering with it. If you’re new to Stimulus, this is a great place to dive in! 🤿 Follow along with Akshay as he builds a simple text widget, and covers everything you need to start using Stimulus in your own Rails apps along the way.

This is a relatively short article and a great Stimulus starting point. If you’re hungry for more once you’re done, I wrote my own introduction to Stimulus article here — Learn Stimulus building a toggle.

# quickly generate a new stimulus controller
# auto-runs stimulus:manifest:update (if needed)
#

> rails g stimulus tab
    create app/javascript/controllers/tab_controller.js