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Andrew Mason
Andrew Mason

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at andrewm.codes

Ruby on Rails Development with VS Code

I tried several editors when I first got into programming, but VS Code quickly stuck. For the past three years, I have been continually updating my VS Code settings, extensions, keybindings, and snippets to help me be as productive as my diehard VIM friends.

Here is a quick article showing my setup for working with Rails that I use when I work on CodeFund and my Rails side projects.

Extensions

These are the ones I think are the most important. For a full list, check out this gist.

Theme

Icons

General

Ruby & Rails

* must have!

Settings

These are my global settings. For a lot of projects, I will override these settings with a workspace settings file which works great.

{
    // TELEMETRY
    // Enable usage data and errors to be sent to a Microsoft online service.
    "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false,

    // WINDOW
    // Adjust the zoom level of the window.
    "window.zoomLevel": 0,

    // BREADCRUMBS
    // Enable/disable navigation breadcrumbs.
    "breadcrumbs.enabled": true,

    // EXPLORER
    // Controls whether the explorer should ask for confirmation to move files and folders via drag and drop.
    "explorer.confirmDragAndDrop": false,
    // Controls whether a top border is drawn on modified (dirty) editor tabs or not.
    "workbench.editor.highlightModifiedTabs": true,
    // Controls the location of the sidebar. It can either show on the left or right of the workbench.
    "workbench.sideBar.location": "right",
    // Controls which editor is shown at startup, if none are restored from the previous session.
    "workbench.startupEditor": "newUntitledFile",
    // Specifies the icon theme used in the workbench or 'null' to not show any file icons.
    "workbench.iconTheme": "vscode-great-icons",
    // Specifies the color theme used in the workbench.
    "workbench.colorTheme": "One Dark Pro",
    // Overrides colors from the currently selected color theme.
    "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
      "editor.background": "#1a1c20",
      "editorIndentGuide.activeBackground": "#b83957",
      "tab.activeBorderTop": "#64676E"
    },

    // EDITOR
    // Controls whether the editor should run in a mode where it is optimized for screen readers.
    "editor.accessibilitySupport": "off",
    // Controls the font family.
    "editor.fontFamily": "Fira Code",
    // Enables/Disables font ligatures.
    "editor.fontLigatures": true,
    // Controls the font size in pixels.
    "editor.fontSize": 14,
    // Controls the line height. Use 0 to compute the line height from the font size.
    "editor.lineHeight": 20,
    // Controls the letter spacing in pixels.
    "editor.letterSpacing": 0.2,
    // Controls the font weight.
    "editor.fontWeight": "400",
    // The number of spaces a tab is equal to.
    "editor.tabSize": 2,
    // Controls how the editor should render whitespace characters.
    "editor.renderWhitespace": "all",
    // Controls the cursor style.
    "editor.cursorStyle": "line",
    // Controls the width of the cursor when #editor.cursorStyle# is set to line.
    "editor.cursorWidth": 5,
    // Control the cursor animation style.
    "editor.cursorBlinking": "solid",
    // Render vertical rulers after a certain number of monospace characters. Use multiple values for multiple rulers.
    "editor.rulers": [
      120
    ],
    // Controls whether the minimap is shown.
    "editor.minimap.enabled": false,
    // Format a file on save.
    "editor.formatOnSave": false,
    // Timeout in milliseconds after which the formatting that is run on file save is cancelled.
    "editor.formatOnSaveTimeout": 1500,
    // Controls whether the editor should automatically format the pasted content.
    "editor.formatOnPaste": true,
    // Controls whether the editor should automatically format the line after typing.
    "editor.formatOnType": false,
    // Controls whether the editor should automatically adjust the indentation when users type, paste or move lines.
    "editor.autoIndent": "keep",

    // TERMINAL
    // Customizes which terminal application to run on macOS.
    "terminal.external.osxExec": "Archipelago.app",
    // The path of the shell that the terminal uses on macOS
    "terminal.integrated.shell.osx": "/bin/zsh",
    // Controls the font size in pixels of the terminal.
    "terminal.integrated.fontSize": 14,

    // FILES
    // When enabled, will trim trailing whitespace when saving a file.
    "files.trimTrailingWhitespace": true,
    // When enabled, insert a final new line at the end of the file when saving it.
    "files.insertFinalNewline": true,
    // When enabled, will trim all new lines after the final new line at the end of the file when saving it.
    "files.trimFinalNewlines": true,
    // Controls auto save of dirty files.
    "files.autoSave": "onFocusChange",
    // Configure file associations to languages (e.g. "*.extension": "html"). These have precedence over the default associations of the languages installed.
    "files.associations": {
      "*.erb": "erb",
      "Gemfile": "ruby"
    },

    // EMMET
    // Enable Emmet abbreviations in languages that are not supported by default.
    "emmet.includeLanguages": {
      "html": "html",
      "html.erb": "html",
      "html.inky": "html",
      "erb": "html"
    },

    // LANG: Javascript
    // Enable/disable automatic updating of import paths when you rename or move a file in VS Code.
    "javascript.updateImportsOnFileMove.enabled": "always",
    "npm.packageManager": "yarn",

    // PLUGIN: Ruby
    // Use built-in language server
    "ruby.useLanguageServer": true,
    // Time (ms) to wait after keypress before running enabled linters.
    "ruby.lintDebounceTime": 1500,
    //run non-lint commands with bundle exec
    "ruby.useBundler": true,
    // Set individual ruby linters to use
    "ruby.lint": {
      // enable standard via bundler
      "standard": {
        // Prefix the `standard` command with `bundle exec`
        "useBundler": true
      }
    },
    // Which system to use for formatting. Use `false` to disable or if another extension provides this feature.
    "ruby.format": "standard",

    // GIT
    // When enabled, commits will automatically be fetched from the default remote of the current Git repository.
    "git.autofetch": true,
    // Commit all changes when there are no staged changes.
    "git.enableSmartCommit": true,
    // Enables commit signing with GPG.
    "git.enableCommitSigning": true,
    // Ignores the warning when there are too many changes in a repository.
    "git.ignoreLimitWarning": true,

    // PLUGIN: Gitlens
    // Specifies where to show the Repositories view
    "gitlens.views.repositories.location": "gitlens",
    // Specifies where to show the File History view
    "gitlens.views.fileHistory.location": "gitlens",
    // Specifies where to show the Line History view
    "gitlens.views.lineHistory.location": "gitlens",
    // Specifies where to show the Compare view
    "gitlens.views.compare.location": "gitlens",
    // Specifies where to show the Search Commits view
    "gitlens.views.search.location": "gitlens",
    // Specifies whether to provide an authors code lens, showing number of authors of the file or code block and the most prominent author (if there is more than one)
    "gitlens.codeLens.authors.enabled": false,
    // Specifies whether to provide a recent change code lens, showing the author and date of the most recent commit for the file or code block
    "gitlens.codeLens.recentChange.enabled": false,
    // Specifies whether to provide any Git code lens, by default.
    "gitlens.codeLens.enabled": false,

    // PLUGIN: Settings Sync
    // Controls whether opened editors should show in tabs or not.
    "sync.gist": "YOUR_TOKEN",

    // PLUGIN: Font Awesome Auto-complete
    "fontAwesomeAutocomplete.patterns": [
      "**/*.html",
      "**/*.html.erb"
    ],

    // PLUGIN: Peacock
    // Colors for Peacock extension
    "peacock.favoriteColors": [
      {
        "name": "Angular Red",
        "value": "#b52e31"
      },
      {
        "name": "Auth0 Orange",
        "value": "#eb5424"
      },
      {
        "name": "Azure Blue",
        "value": "#007fff"
      },
      {
        "name": "C# Purple",
        "value": "#68217A"
      },
      {
        "name": "Gatsby Purple",
        "value": "#639"
      },
      {
        "name": "Go Cyan",
        "value": "#5dc9e2"
      },
      {
        "name": "Java Blue-Gray",
        "value": "#557c9b"
      },
      {
        "name": "JavaScript Yellow",
        "value": "#f9e64f"
      },
      {
        "name": "Mandalorian Blue",
        "value": "#1857a4"
      },
      {
        "name": "Node Green",
        "value": "#215732"
      },
      {
        "name": "React Blue",
        "value": "#00b3e6"
      },
      {
        "name": "Something Different",
        "value": "#832561"
      },
      {
        "name": "Vue Green",
        "value": "#42b883"
      }
    ],

    // Language specific formatting settings
    "[jsonc]": {
      "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
    },
    "[html]": {
      "editor.defaultFormatter": "vscode.html-language-features"
    },
    "[markdown]": {
      "editor.defaultFormatter": "yzhang.markdown-all-in-one"
    },
    "[yaml]": {
      "editor.defaultFormatter": "redhat.vscode-yaml"
    },
    "[json]": {
      "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
    },
    "[typescript]": {
      "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
    },
    "[javascript]": {
      "editor.defaultFormatter": "numso.prettier-standard-vscode"
    },
    "[ruby]": {
      "editor.formatOnSave": true
    },
    "[scss]": {
      "editor.formatOnSave": true
    }
  }
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Keybindings

[
  {
    "key": "shift+alt+e",
    "command": "erb.toggleTags",
    "when": "editorTextFocus"
  },
  {
    "key": "alt+f",
    "command": "extension.railsFlipFlop"
  }
]
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Snippets

Checkout hopsoft/model_probe if you are curious about the first snippet!

{
  "model comments": {
    "prefix": "rmc",
    "body": [
      "  # extends ...................................................................",
      "",
      "  # includes ..................................................................",
      "",
      "  # relationships .............................................................",
      "",
      "  # validations ...............................................................",
      "",
      "  # callbacks .................................................................",
      "",
      "  # scopes ....................................................................",
      "",
      "  # additional config (i.e. accepts_nested_attribute_for etc...) ..............",
      "",
      "  # class methods .............................................................",
      "",
      "  # public instance methods ...................................................",
      "",
      "  # protected instance methods ................................................",
      "",
      "  # private instance methods ..................................................",
      ""
    ],
    "description": "model comments"
  },
  "Add pry binding": {
    "prefix": "bp",
    "body": [
      "binding.pry"
    ],
    "description": "Add pry binding"
  },
  "Add erb pry binding": {
    "prefix": "ebp",
    "body": [
      "<% binding.pry %>"
    ],
    "description": "Add erb pry binding"
  }
}
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Hopefully you can take something from my setup to add to yours!

Happy coding!

Latest comments (4)

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sergiolupus profile image
Serj Petrenko

Thanks, I found a lot of useful plugins that I didn't use before.

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andrewmcodes profile image
Andrew Mason

Glad to hear!! Thanks for reading 😊

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vvo profile image
Vincent Voyer

Thanks for all the good extensions, I also enjoy very much Gem Lens: marketplace.visualstudio.com/items.... Easy way to know if I can upgrade a gem

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