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Zil Norvilis
Zil Norvilis

Posted on • Updated on

Configure LiveReload on Rails 6

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Very often I find myself tired needing to manually refresh my browser after every little change I do to my code. It is not too hard to do it, but sometimes it is just so annoying.
In such cases I like setting up Rails app preview auto re-loadable. It's pretty easy to do and only takes 5 steps:

First off, let's install a couple of gems into development environment, since live-reloading doesn't even make sense on production.

STEP 1: Add the following to your Gemfile:

gem 'guard-livereload'
gem 'rack-livereload'
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and run 'bundle install'.

Alternatively, you can run these commands from within your terminal to install the necessary gems

bundle add 'guard-livereload'
bundle add 'rack-livereload'
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STEP 2: Next, we need to initialize livereload, by running:

bundle exec guard init livereload
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STEP 3: Now add the following line to the very end of file enviroments/development.rb

config.middleware.insert_after ActionDispatch::Static, Rack::LiveReload
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STEP 4: Now you can run the command to start the livereload guard. Keep it running alongside your puma server.

bundle exec guard
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PS. You may need to restart your Puma server before livereloading starts working.

STEP 5: install 'LiveReload' extension on your browser.

In order to start your autoreloading preview do this:
start your Puma Server

rails start
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start your autoreload guard

bundle exec guard
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Make sure to do so in the browser with LiveReload extension running.

That's pretty much it. Now every time you save your code-base file it'll auto reload your browser tab.

You may also watch the video about it on my YouTube channel:

Top comments (9)

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artemiy17 profile image
Artemiy17 • Edited

bundle exec guard
Gives that error ".......lib/guard/livereload/reactor.rb:48:in _start_reactor': undefined methodepoll?' for EventMachine:Module (NoMethodError)"

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zilton7 profile image
Zil Norvilis

Which Rails version? I was using 6 here

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artemiy17 profile image
Artemiy17

I used 6.1.4.4 when i tried

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zilton7 profile image
Zil Norvilis

did you fix the issue eventually?

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artemiy17 profile image
Artemiy17

No, I gave up. Don't have much experience in such cases.

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juniovitorino profile image
Junio Vitorino

Same here with Ruby 3.0.3 and Rails 7.0.0.

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spaquet profile image
Stephane Paquet

Not sure you need live reload for Rails 7 though

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jkmneu profile image
Julien KARMANN

Man thanks for this tutorial, it was really helpful ! :)

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yusufnviiri profile image
yusufnviiri

Thanks man....it helped