A hands-on book that walks you through building a live chat app from scratch with Rails 8, Turbo Streams, Stimulus, and Action Cable. One codebase, ten chapters, a working app at the end.
Content complete. Currently in final editing. Pre-sale pricing until release.
Every chapter adds to the same codebase. By the end, you have a working app, not a pile of disconnected examples.
Think Slack, but much simpler. Rooms, direct messages, and live presence indicators. Chat is a perfect fit for learning real-time because every feature is inherently live. If a message needs a page refresh to show up, something is broken.
I wrote this because I kept seeing the same gap. Plenty of tutorials show you how to set up Action Cable or drop a Turbo Frame onto a page. Almost none of them build something real with it. They stop at "here's how broadcasts work" and leave you to figure out the rest on your own.
This book does not stop there. You will wire up typing indicators, handle WebSocket reconnections, build scoped broadcasts for private messages, and test all of it. The kind of stuff that actually comes up when you try to ship a real-time feature.
Ten chapters. Each one builds on the last.
You should be comfortable with Rails basics (models, controllers, views). The book handles the rest.
You've been building server-rendered apps and want to add real-time features without bolting on a JavaScript framework.
You used Turbo in Rails 7 but haven't dug into page morphing, Solid Cable, or the other stuff that changed.
You want live updates, notifications, and presence in your app without maintaining a separate frontend.
You're curious whether Rails can really do real-time without a client-side rendering engine. (It can. This book shows you how.)
Everything you need to follow along and build.
PDF, ePub, and MOBI. Read it wherever you want.
Private GitHub repo with a branch per chapter so you can check your work or jump ahead.
Free updates for the life of Rails 8. When something changes, the book gets updated.
Pre-sale pricing. Goes up when the final version ships.
PDF, ePub, MOBI + source code + updates
Get the BookNot happy with it? Email me and I'll refund you. No time limit, no questions.
Drop your email and I'll send you a few sample chapters. Get a feel for the writing style and depth before you spend anything.
Yep. You should be comfortable with models, controllers, views, and running a Rails app locally. The book covers real-time features, not Rails fundamentals. If you're brand new to Rails, start with a beginner resource first. (My other book, Build a SaaS App in Ruby on Rails 8, covers the full stack from scratch.)
PDF, ePub, and MOBI. All three come with your purchase.
Yes. Gumroad supports PayPal right on the payment form. Look for the PayPal button in the upper right of the checkout widget.
The content is complete and I'm in the final editing stage. Pre-sale customers get access the moment it ships. If you buy now, you'll also get any updates I publish between now and then.
Email me and I'll refund you. No time limit, no hoops.
Same author, different book. The SaaS book covers the full stack of building and deploying a SaaS product. This one goes deep on real-time specifically. They pair well together but you don't need one to read the other.
I'm Rob. I've been building web applications professionally for over a decade, mostly in Rails. I run Status Cat on the same stack I write about, and I've been publishing technical content on my blog and Medium for years.
I wrote Build a SaaS App in Ruby on Rails because I could not find a book that actually shipped a real app. I wrote this one because I had the same problem with real-time. Plenty of docs, not enough complete examples.