In this post, we’ll walk through setting up Tiptap’s collaboration feature with Rails Action Cable and ReactJs. Tiptap is a powerful headless editor built on ProseMirror, and when combined with Y.js, it allows for real-time collaborative editing. We’ll use Mantine component libaray, but it’s not mandatory for this setup.
If you prefer to dive directly into the code, check out the example on Github
Prerequisites
Ensure you have the following installed:
- Ruby on Rails
- Redis
- Node.js and Yarn
- Your preferred mehtod of React Setup with Rails
Step 1: Setting Up Mantine
First, we’ll set up Mantine for styling. Follow the Mantine guide for Vite to install the necessary packages: (Same method worked for me using esbuild in my setup. You can do it you own way or choose not to use Mantine)
yarn add @mantine/core @mantine/hooks @mantine/tiptap @tabler/icons-react @tiptap/react @tiptap/extension-link @tiptap/starter-kit @tiptap/extension-placeholder @tiptap/extension-collaboration-cursor @tiptap/extension-collaboration yjs y-prosemirror
yarn add --dev postcss postcss-preset-mantine postcss-simple-vars
Note: This setup includes both Mantine and Tiptap. If you do not require Mantine, skip installing Mantine-related dependencies.
Step 2: Install Rails Dependencies
bundle add redis y-rb_actioncable y-rb
Here we are installing Y.js adapter for Ruby and Action Cable.
Step 3: Configure Tiptap with Collaboration
In the Tiptap setup, configure the StarterKit with history: false as the Collaboration extension comes with its own history management. Additionally, we’ll add a random color generator for collaboration cursors.
function getRandomColor() {
const colors = ["#ff901f", "#ff2975", "#f222ff", "#8c1eff"];
const selectedIndex = Math.floor(Math.random() * (colors.length - 1));
return colors[selectedIndex];
}
const editor = useEditor({
extensions: [
StarterKit.configure({ history: false }),
Underline,
Link,
Superscript,
SubScript,
Highlight,
TextAlign.configure({ types: ['heading', 'paragraph'] }),
Placeholder.configure({ placeholder: 'This is placeholder' }),
Collaboration.configure({
document: doc // Configure Y.Doc for collaboration
}),
CollaborationCursor.configure({
provider,
user: {
name: "Vikas",
color: getRandomColor()
}
})
]
});
Code to connect with websocket provided by ActionCable. Don’t worry about the channel creation now, we will create it later. Assuming channel name will be SyncChannel
we will add following code. (Here id is hardcoded, as this is just a demo. we won’t be using proper auth in backend as well to keep things simple)
// ... other imports
import { createConsumer } from "@rails/actioncable"
import { WebsocketProvider } from "@y-rb/actioncable";
const consumer = createConsumer();
const doc = new Y.Doc()
const provider = new WebsocketProvider(
doc,
consumer,
"SyncChannel",
{
id: 1
}
);
// ... other codes
You can see full frontend code in App.jsx. This contains everything in a single file which is not great but good enough for this case.
Step 4: Set Up Rails Action Cable
Create a new channel name SyncChannel
at app/channels/sync_channel.rb
.
# frozen_string_literal: true
class SyncChannel < ApplicationCable::Channel
include Y::Actioncable::Sync
def subscribed
# initiate sync & subscribe to updates, with optional persistence mechanism
sync_for(session) { |id, update| save_doc(id, update) }
end
def receive(message)
# broadcast update to all connected clients on all servers
sync_to(session, message)
end
def doc
@doc ||= load { |id| load_doc(id) }
end
private
def session
@session ||= Session.new(params[:id])
end
def load_doc(id)
data = REDIS.get(id)
data = data.unpack("C*") unless data.nil?
data
end
def save_doc(id, state)
REDIS.set(id, state.pack("C*"))
end
end
This has Redis initialized as REDIS, replace it with your Redis variable name. We also created a Session model for sync_for
mehtod. You can check documentation for sync_for here.
# frozen_string_literal: true
class Session
attr_reader :id
def initialize(id)
@id = id
end
def to_s
"sessions:#{id}"
end
end
And finally ApplicationCable::Connection
will be as follows
module ApplicationCable
class Connection < ActionCable::Connection::Base
identified_by :id
def connect
self.id = SecureRandom.uuid
end
end
end
Step 6: Add Styles for Collaboration Cursor (Option)
Everything should be working by now. In this step the cursor was looking odd, so some CSS can be add to make it look good.
Finally you can run your rails server and it should be good to go once we add all missing piecies specially authorisation.
Conclusion
By following these steps, you should have a real-time collaborative editor up and running using Tiptap, Y.js, and Rails Action Cable. While we used Mantine for styling in this demo, you can customize the styling as per your requirements. This setup provides a robust foundation for building collaborative applications with rich text editing capabilities.
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