Assets Compile

When your app is running on AWS Lambda, the Jets helper methods like stylesheet_link_tag, javascript_include_tag, javascript_importmap_tags, asset_path, etc will point to the s3 bucket url. You can also configure settings so that the assets are served from a CDN like CloudFront that you manage yourself.

Compile Config

config/jets/deploy.rb

Jets.deploy.configure do
  config.assets.build.enable = true
  config.assets.build.precompile_command = "JETS_DOTENV=0 SECRET_KEY_BASE=dummy SECRET_KEY_BASE_DUMMY=1 bin/rails assets:precompile"
  config.assets.build.nodejs.enable = "auto"
  config.assets.build.nodejs.version = "20.12.1"

  config.assets.upload.enable = true
  config.assets.upload.folders = ["public"]
  config.assets.upload.cache_control = nil
  config.assets.upload.max_age = 3600
end

Rails Asset Pipeline

There are two ways you can use the Rails asset pipeline with Jets.

  1. Compiling assets locally.
  2. Compiling assets during docker build.

It works similar to Rails Asset Pipeline with Heroku with a few more configuration options.

Compiling assets locally

If a public/assets/manifest-*.js is detected, Jets assumes that you have already precompiled assets yourself and will not attempt to compile assets.

Advantage: Compile assets locally before deployment may make sense if you have a complicated compiliation process and need more control over it. Additionally, compiling adds another 1m to the deploy overhead. You can get compiling out of the deployment band and decide when compilation is necessary.

Disadvantage: It’s one thing you have to do and take responsbility of. You need to install the toolchain and make sure it’s consistent among developers or on a dedicated CI machine.

Note: It is important to not .gitignore or .dockerignore the public/assets folder if you want to use assets that you have compiled yourself. Otherwise, the files will not be present in the uploaded zip file to the remote runner. You can also use config.code.always_keep, see: Code Zip.

Compiling assets remotely

When public/assets/manifest-*.js is not detected, Jets will compile assets by running the bin/rails assets:precompile command as part of the docker build process.

Assets Upload

Jets will upload the assets files to s3 and configure JETS_ASSET_HOST to point to the s3 bucket so your Rails application can serve the assets out of s3, which is faster.

NodeJS

As of Rails 7, nodejs is no longer required to compile assets. See: Rails 7 will have three great answers to JavaScript in 2021+. If you need nodejs, see: Assets Nodejs

Reference

The table below covers each setting. Each option is configured with config.OPTION. The config. portion is not shown for conciseness. IE: logger.level vs config.logger.level.

Name Default Description
assets.build.detect_local true If public/assets/manifest-*.js is detected in the source code, Jets assumes you have locally precompiled assets and the remote runner will not attempt to compile assets in the remote runner docker build process.
assets.build.enable “conditional” When Rails, it’s set to true. For other frameworks like sinatra, it’s set to false.
assets.build.nodejs.enable auto The auto value means that it will be auto-detected. When a package.json is detected in the source code, it’ll assume you’ll need nodejs and yarn installed.
assets.build.nodejs.version 20.12.1 The nodejs version to use. We try to default to the latest LTS node.
assets.build.nodejs.deployment_stage true When is nodejs.enable, it will install for both build and deployment stages for the multi-stage docker build process. You can use this to disable it for the deployment phase. This means the Docker image you’re running won’t have access to the nodejs runtime. It’s only use to build artifacts.
assets.build.precompile_command “conditional” When Rails, the default command is a jets precompile_assets.sh, which calls rails assets:precompile if it’s available. Otherwise, it is nil.
assets.upload.cache_control nil The cache control header to use for assets uploaded to s3. Example: public, max-age=3600.
assets.upload.enable true Upload the assets from assets.upload.folders, IE: public, to s3.
assets.upload.folders [“public”] Folders to upload to s3.
assets.upload.max_age 3600 The max age in seconds for the cache control header. This is a shorter way to set the cache_control. IE: 3600 => public, max-age=3600

See Full Config Reference

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