Getting started

Let’s get Phlex up and running in your app.

Phlex is a standalone Ruby library with zero dependencies, but most folks will want to use it with Ruby on Rails so let’s start there.

TIP

It’s possible to use Phlex with Sinatra, Roda, Hanami or any other Ruby framework, but you’ll need to kick off the rendering yourself.

Installing Phlex in a Rails app

To install Phlex in a Rails app, you’ll need to add the phlex-rails gem to your Gemfile. The phlex-rails gem includes the phlex gem as a dependency, so you won’t need to add that separately. phlex-rails also includes a generator to help you get started.

Start by running:

bundle add phlex-rails

This will install the latest version of phlex and phlex-rails and add phlex-rails to your Gemfile. Once that’s finished, you’ll want to run the install generator to kick things off:

bundle exec rails generate phlex:install

Conflicts with the ViewComponent gem

The install generator will configure Rails to autoload app/views as the Views:: namespace and app/components as the Components:: namespace. This may cause issues if you already have ViewComponent components in the folder app/components.

There are a couple of ways you can fix this:

1. you could move your ViewComponent components under the Components:: namespace by renaming them all. For example if you had a component called CardComponent, you would need to rename it to Components::CardComponent;
2. alternatively, you could move your ViewComponent components to a different directory such as app/view_components and autoload that directory in the root namespace.

It’s important for Phlex components to live in a module because of how Kits work, and we recommend the Components module under app/components.