guides/source/8_1_release_notes.md
DO NOT READ THIS FILE ON GITHUB, GUIDES ARE PUBLISHED ON https://guides.rubyonrails.org.
Highlights in Rails 8.1:
These release notes cover only the major changes. To learn about various bug fixes and changes, please refer to the changelogs or check out the list of commits in the main Rails repository on GitHub.
If you're upgrading an existing application, it's a great idea to have good test coverage before going in. You should also first upgrade to Rails 8.0 in case you haven't and make sure your application still runs as expected before attempting an update to Rails 8.1. A list of things to watch out for when upgrading is available in the Upgrading Ruby on Rails guide.
Long-running jobs can now be broken into discrete steps that allow execution to continue from the last completed step rather than the beginning after a restart. This is especially helpful when doing deploys with Kamal, which will only give job-running containers thirty seconds to shut down by default.
Example:
class ProcessImportJob < ApplicationJob
include ActiveJob::Continuable
def perform(import_id)
@import = Import.find(import_id)
# block format
step :initialize do
@import.initialize
end
# step with cursor, the cursor is saved when the job is interrupted
step :process do |step|
@import.records.find_each(start: step.cursor) do |record|
record.process
step.advance! from: record.id
end
end
# method format
step :finalize
end
private
def finalize
@import.finalize
end
end
The default logger in Rails is great for human consumption, but less ideal for post-processing. The new Event Reporter provides a unified interface for producing structured events in Rails applications:
Rails.event.notify("user.signup", user_id: 123, email: "[email protected]")
It supports adding tags to events:
Rails.event.tagged("graphql") do
# Event includes tags: { graphql: true }
Rails.event.notify("user.signup", user_id: 123, email: "[email protected]")
end
As well as context:
# All events will contain context: {request_id: "abc123", shop_id: 456}
Rails.event.set_context(request_id: "abc123", shop_id: 456)
Events are emitted to subscribers. Applications register subscribers to
control how events are serialized and emitted. Subscribers must implement
an #emit method, which receives the event hash:
class LogSubscriber
def emit(event)
payload = event[:payload].map { |key, value| "#{key}=#{value}" }.join(" ")
source_location = event[:source_location]
log = "[#{event[:name]}] #{payload} at #{source_location[:filepath]}:#{source_location[:lineno]}"
Rails.logger.info(log)
end
end
Developer machines have gotten incredibly quick with loads of cores, which make them great local runners of even relatively large test suites.
This makes getting rid of a cloud-setup for all of CI not just feasible but
desirable for many small-to-mid-sized applications, and Rails has therefore
added a default CI declaration DSL, which is defined in config/ci.rb and run
by bin/ci. It looks like this:
CI.run do
step "Setup", "bin/setup --skip-server"
step "Style: Ruby", "bin/rubocop"
step "Security: Gem audit", "bin/bundler-audit"
step "Security: Importmap vulnerability audit", "bin/importmap audit"
step "Security: Brakeman code analysis", "bin/brakeman --quiet --no-pager --exit-on-warn --exit-on-error"
step "Tests: Rails", "bin/rails test"
step "Tests: Seeds", "env RAILS_ENV=test bin/rails db:seed:replant"
# Requires the `gh` CLI and `gh extension install basecamp/gh-signoff`.
if success?
step "Signoff: All systems go. Ready for merge and deploy.", "gh signoff"
else
failure "Signoff: CI failed. Do not merge or deploy.", "Fix the issues and try again."
end
end
The optional integration with gh ensures that PRs must be signed off by a passing CI run in order to be eligible to be merged.
Markdown has become the lingua franca of AI, and Rails has embraced this adoption by making it easier to respond to markdown requests and render them directly:
class Page
def to_markdown
body
end
end
class PagesController < ActionController::Base
def show
@page = Page.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
format.html
format.md { render markdown: @page }
end
end
end
Kamal can now easily grab its secrets from the encrypted Rails credentials store for deploys. This makes it a low-fi alternative to external secret stores that only needs the master key available to work:
# .kamal/secrets
KAMAL_REGISTRY_PASSWORD=$(rails credentials:fetch kamal.registry_password)
Active Record associations can now be marked as being deprecated:
class Author < ApplicationRecord
has_many :posts, deprecated: true
end
With that, usage of the posts association will be reported. This includes
explicit API calls like
author.posts
author.posts = ...
and others, as well as indirect usage like
author.preload(:posts)
usage via nested attributes, and more.
Three reporting modes are supported (:warn, :raise, and :notify), and
backtraces can be enabled or disabled, though you always get the location of the
reported usage regardless. Defaults are :warn mode and disabled backtraces.
Kamal no longer needs a remote registry, like Docker Hub or GHCR, to do basic deploys. By default, Kamal 2.8 will now use a local registry for simple deploys. For large-scale deploys, you'll still want to use a remote registry, but this makes it easier to get started and see your first Hello World deployment in the wild.
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Remove deprecated rails/console/methods.rb file.
Remove deprecated bin/rake stats command.
Remove deprecated STATS_DIRECTORIES.
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Remove deprecated support to skipping over leading brackets in parameter names in the parameter parser.
Before:
ActionDispatch::ParamBuilder.from_query_string("[foo]=bar") # => { "foo" => "bar" }
ActionDispatch::ParamBuilder.from_query_string("[foo][bar]=baz") # => { "foo" => { "bar" => "baz" } }
After:
ActionDispatch::ParamBuilder.from_query_string("[foo]=bar") # => { "[foo]" => "bar" }
ActionDispatch::ParamBuilder.from_query_string("[foo][bar]=baz") # => { "[foo]" => { "bar" => "baz" } }
Remove deprecated support for using semicolons as a query string separator.
Before:
ActionDispatch::QueryParser.each_pair("foo=bar;baz=quux").to_a
# => [["foo", "bar"], ["baz", "quux"]]
After:
ActionDispatch::QueryParser.each_pair("foo=bar;baz=quux").to_a
# => [["foo", "bar;baz=quux"]]
Remove deprecated support to a route to multiple paths.
Rails.application.config.action_dispatch.ignore_leading_brackets.config.action_dispatch.verbose_redirect_logs = true to your config/development.rb file.Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Remove deprecated :retries option for the SQLite3 adapter.
Remove deprecated :unsigned_float and :unsigned_decimal column methods for MySQL.
Deprecate using an order dependent finder
method (e.g. #first) without
an order.
Deprecate ActiveRecord::Base.signed_id_verifier_secret in favor of
Rails.application.message_verifiers (or Model.signed_id_verifier if the
secret is specific to a model).
Deprecate using insert_all/upsert_all with unpersisted records in
associations.
Deprecate usage of WITH, WITH RECURSIVE and DISTINCT with
update_all.
schema.rb are now sorted alphabetically.Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
:azure storage service.Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Remove deprecated passing a Time object to Time#since.
Remove deprecated Benchmark.ms method. It is now defined in the benchmark gem.
Remove deprecated addition for Time instances with ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone.
Remove deprecated support for to_time to preserve the system local time. It will now always preserve the receiver
timezone.
Deprecate config.active_support.to_time_preserves_timezone.
Deprecate String#mb_chars and ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Chars.
Deprecate ActiveSupport::Configurable.
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Remove support to set ActiveJob::Base.enqueue_after_transaction_commit to :never, :always and :default.
Remove deprecated Rails.application.config.active_job.enqueue_after_transaction_commit.
Remove deprecated internal SuckerPunch adapter in favor of the adapter included with the sucker_punch gem.
Custom Active Job serializers must have a public #klass method.
Deprecate built-in sidekiq adapter (now provided by sidekiq gem).
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Deprecate the ActionText::TrixAttachment class
Deprecate the ActionText::Attachments::TrixConversion module
Deprecate ActionText::Attachable#to_trix_content_attachment_partial_path. Override to_editor_content_attachment_partial_path instead.
Deprecate ActionText::RichText#to_trix_html.
Deprecate ActionText::Content#to_trix_html.
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
Please refer to the Changelog for detailed changes.
See the full list of contributors to Rails for the many people who spent many hours making Rails, the stable and robust framework it is. Kudos to all of them.