Welcome to another edition of This Week in #dev, a series of posts where we bring some of the most interesting Slack conversations to the public.
Comparing Version Strings
Svenja has discovered the use of Gem::Version to compare version
strings. This class is provided by RubyGems and handles comparing versions where
strings would fail because they’re compared lexicographically.
"6.10" >= "6.4"
# => false
Gem::Version.new("6.10") >= Gem::Version.new("6.4")
# => true
Git: Intending to Add Untracked Files
Neil suggested using the command git add --intend-to-add (-N for short) to move
untracked files to the Changes not staged for commit area. This will allow you to use
git add --patch or git diff, for example, to review changes on files that haven’t
been added to the Git repository yet.
Reusable Components With The <template> Tag
Summer ☀️ recommended using an invisible <template> tag to render multiple
instances of a set of HTML tags in vanilla JavaScript. This tag provides an
interface for creating a clone of its contents, modifying it, and inserting it
into the page.
Sean Doyle chimed in to mention that there is a Template Parts proposal to WICG that will support rudimentary “rendering” with placeholders and values:
<template id="foo">
<div class="foo {{y}}">{{x}} world</div>
</template>
<script>
const templateElement = document.getElementById("foo")
const variables = { x: "Hello", y: "bar"}
const templateInstance = new TemplateInstance(
templateElement,
variables
)
document.append(templateInstance)
</script>
There’s a package that implements this proposal if you want to try it out.
Checking Feature Compatibility Across Email Clients
Fer has introduced caniemail.com, a website that shows how well a feature is
supported by email clients (you probably know caniuse.com). He has used it to
discover that prefers-color-scheme is not supported by Gmail.
Self-Destructing Stimulus Controllers
Summer ☀️ suggested using self-destructing Stimulus controllers as a way to trigger JavaScript code via a Turbo Stream response. This approach involves rendering an invisible HTML tag that connects to a Stimulus controller, which will then destroy the HTML tag once it has completed its work. Matheus Richard added that a custom Turbo action is an alternative solution to this problem.
Thanks
This edition was brought to you by Fer Perales, Matheus Richard, Neil Carvalho, Summer ☀️, and Svenja Schäfer. Thanks to all contributors! 🎉