December 9, 2025
A curated list of tools that accelerate development and keep your codebase clean
One of the most underrated strengths of Ruby on Rails is its generator ecosystem. Beyond the native Rails generators, many gems ship with their own commands to scaffold authentication, background jobs, pagination, translations, slugs, geolocation, and much more.
These generators save time, enforce best practices, and help maintain consistent architecture across your project.
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In this article, I highlight some of the most useful Ruby gems that include generators — the ones that truly improve your workflow and development speed.
1. Devise — Complete authentication in minutes
Generators:
- devise:install
- devise MODEL
- devise:views
- devise:controllers
- mongoid:devise (if you’re using Mongoid)
Devise handles everything related to authentication: models, routes, views, controllers, mailers, and configuration.
Example:
rails g devise User
If your app needs login, registration, password recovery, or OAuth extensions, Devise is the most reliable way to build it fast.
2. CancanCan — Simple and centralized authorization
Generator:
- cancan:ability
This command creates the Ability class where you define the permissions for all roles and resources.
rails g cancan:ability
Perfect for dashboards, admin panels, and apps with role-based access control.
3. Mobility — Model translations done right
Generators:
- mobility:install
- mobility:translations
Mobility brings flexible translation support to models. It works with Postgres JSONB, key-value stores, and dedicated tables.
If your application is multilingual, this gem is a must-have.
4. FriendlyId & FriendlyId Mobility — SEO-friendly URLs
Generators:
- friendly_id
- friendly_id_mobility
FriendlyId makes URLs readable:
/articles/ruby-generators-guide
Instead of numeric IDs like:
/articles/42
With Mobility, you also get translated slugs for multilingual content.
5. Kaminari — Pagination with customizable views
Generators:
- kaminari:config
- kaminari:views
Kaminari gives you pagination logic and view templates you can fully customize.
rails g kaminari:views
6. Geocoder — Location, geocoding, and IP lookup
Generators:
- geocoder:config
- geocoder:maxmind:geolite_city
- geocoder:maxmind:geolite_country
Geocoder helps you build features like:
- “stores near me”
- map-based search
- country detection from IP
- distance sorting
Great for ecommerce, delivery apps, and local services.
7. Responders — Cleaner controllers with less noise
Generator:
- responders:install
Adds smart responder logic (respond_with) that reduces boilerplate in controllers.
Useful in API-driven or resource-heavy applications.
8. RSpec — Powerful test generators
Generators:
- rspec:model
- rspec:controller
- rspec:request
- rspec:feature
- rspec:system
- rspec:job
- rspec:mailer
- rspec:mailbox
Example:
rails g rspec:model Article
If you’re building a professional Rails app, RSpec’s generators help maintain a clean, conventional test structure.
9. Sidekiq — Background jobs ready for production
Generator:
- sidekiq:job
Sidekiq is the de-facto standard for background processing in Rails.
rails g sidekiq:job ProcessOrder
Perfect for emails, API calls, imports, image processing, etc.
10. Heroicon — Hundreds of SVG icons for your Rails views
Generator:
- heroicon:install
Installs a full set of high-quality outline and solid icons you can use directly in ERB.
Great for admin dashboards, forms, and UI components.
11. Stimulus (Hotwire) — Modern interactivity without a SPA
Generator:
- stimulus
rails g stimulus cart
Creates a new Stimulus controller under app/javascript/controllers, ready to add dynamic behavior.
12. MailForm — Simple, database-free contact forms
Generator:
- mail_form MODEL
MailForm is perfect for building form submissions (like contact forms) without storing data in the database.
13. Serializer — Clean JSON structures for APIs
Generator:
- serializer
rails g serializer User
Used to structure API responses and avoid exposing unnecessary model attributes.
14. CanonicalRails — SEO improvements with one command
Generator:
- canonical_rails:install
Adds canonical URL helpers automatically, reducing duplicate content issues.
15. Sentry — Professional error tracking
Generator:
- sentry
Quickly adds monitoring and exception tracking to your Rails app.
Conclusion
These gems not only improve Rails development — they encode years of conventions and best practices into commands you can run in seconds. If you want to level up your Rails workflow, build features faster, and keep your application maintainable, mastering these generators is a great step forward.
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