---
title: A Standard Way to Lint your Views
teaser: 'Find out how to use erb-lint to lint your views, including using Standard
  to lint the Ruby code they contain.

  '
tags: erb lint,standard,rubocop,rails,ruby
author: Connor McQuillan
published_on: 2021-12-06
---

## Why Standard?

In our Ruby [guide] we recommend using [Standard]. The gem describes itself as a
Ruby style guide, linter, and formatter. It helps avoid the never-ending debates
around code style by making decisions for us (I'm looking at you single vs
double quotes!). It’s easy to use, consistent, avoids configuration and helps us
write better styled and more consistent Ruby code.

[guide]: https://github.com/thoughtbot/guides/tree/main/ruby#ruby
[Standard]: https://github.com/testdouble/standard

## Introducing erb-lint

As developers, we often write HTML when working with Ruby. It can be useful to
lint our  `.erb` templates to ensure consistency and catch errors. The
[erb-lint] gem from Shopify is a tool to lint our views. The linters enabled by
default are outlined in the [documentation][linter-docs].

We can run both tools as part of CI. Here’s how to do that in GitHub Actions.

```yaml
# .github/workflows/lint.yml

name: Lint
on: push
jobs:
  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set up Ruby
        uses: ruby/setup-ruby@v1
        with:
          bundler-cache: true
      - name: Run Standard
        run: bundle exec standardrb
      - name: Run erb-lint
        run: bundle exec erblint --lint-all
```

Erb-lint can also run Rubocop to lint the Ruby code inside our views. The
[documentation] demonstrates how to setup Rubocop linting with some basic
configuration. But what about if we want to use Standard to lint the Ruby code
in our views instead?

[erb-lint]: https://github.com/Shopify/erb-lint
[linter-docs]: https://github.com/Shopify/erb-lint#linters
[documentation]: https://github.com/shopify/erb-lint#configuration

## Running Standard with erb-lint

Standard [documentation][documentation-standard] demonstrates how it can be used
via Rubocop. We can add this to our erb-lint config and use Standard via Rubocop
to lint the Ruby code in our views.

At the time of writing, there is a minor open [issue] with Rubocop that means
all cops aren’t disabled by default. But we can override that setting manually,
for now.

```yaml
# .erb-lint.yml
---
EnableDefaultLinters: true
linters:
  Rubocop:
    enabled: true
    rubocop_config:
      require: standard
      inherit_gem:
        standard: config/base.yml
      AllCops:
        DisabledByDefault: true
```

One caveat of how erb-lint uses Rubocop is that the tool considers all Ruby code
in isolation (i.e as though it were an individual Ruby file). This means we need
to disable some of the Standard config in order to obtain sensible results.

To do this, we can inherit from another config file in addition to the Standard
gem. We disable 3 rules that make little or no sense when linting inline Ruby
code in an `.erb` file.

1. `Layout/TrailingEmptyLines`: we don’t need trailing new lines when the Ruby code is inline.
1. `Layout/InitialIndentation`: the initial indentation might not be the start of the line when we write Ruby code in our views.
1. `Lint/UselessAssignment`: erb-lint cannot distinguish between useless and useful assignment, because it doesn’t retain any context. It can’t know whether or not a variable is subsequently used.

```diff
# .erb-lint.yml
---
EnableDefaultLinters: true
linters:
  Rubocop:
    enabled: true
    rubocop_config:
      require: standard
      inherit_gem:
        standard: config/base.yml
+     inherit_from: .erb-lint_rubocop.yml
      AllCops:
        DisabledByDefault: true
```

```yaml
# .erb-lint_rubocop.yml

Layout/TrailingEmptyLines:
  Enabled: false

Layout/InitialIndentation:
  Enabled: false

Lint/UselessAssignment:
  Enabled: false
```

Now we can lint our views including the Ruby code they contain using Standard -
helping us to write better styled and more consistent code in our views!

[documentation-standard]: https://github.com/testdouble/standard#usage-via-rubocop
[issue]: https://github.com/rubocop/rubocop/issues/10175