til/rails/run-rails-console-with-remote-dokku-app.md

Run Rails Console With Remote Dokku App

Whenever I want to rails console into the staging server of an app I'm working on, I first have to ssh into server and then I have to come up with the dokku command to run rails console against the app on that server.

local> ssh app-staging # app-staging is an SSH alias
staging> dokku run my-app rails console

I figured out how to reduce the friction of this by collapsing it into a single command that I can run locally. I can remotely run the dokku command with ssh using an interactive session (-t).

local> ssh -t app-staging dokku run my-app rails console

That will open up a rails console session directly in the current shell session via a remote SSH connection. The -t flag is important because that makes the session interactive so that I can interact with the REPL.

I've even packaged this up into a bin script (bin/staging-console) with a couple checks to enhance the DX. I won't put the whole thing here, but the gist of it is:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

if [ -z "$DOKKU_STAGING_SSH_ALIAS" ]; then
  echo "Error: DOKKU_STAGING_SSH_ALIAS environment variable is not set."
  echo ""
  # echo more help details here ...
  exit 1
fi

# Check if SSH alias exists
# ...

# Check if we can reach the server
# ...

# Run the console
ssh -t "$DOKKU_STAGING_SSH_ALIAS" dokku run my-app rails console "$@"