Ruby on Rails: ActionText Gets a Flexible Block Makeover
Today we're diving into a major ActionText enhancement that separates block content from editor values, plus some excellent testing improvements and community fixes. Jorge Manrubia leads the charge with a thoughtful redesign that makes ActionText more flexible for custom editor integrations, while contributors like Saidbek and Nicolas help clean up our test suite.
Duration: PT3M55S
Episode overview
This episode is a short developer briefing from Ruby on Rails.
It explains recent repository work in plain language.
- Show: Ruby on Rails
- Published: 2026-03-16T00:00:00Z
- Audio duration: PT3M55S
Transcript excerpt
This excerpt keeps the crawler page concise. Listen to the episode or use the RSS feed for the full update.
Hey there, Rails developers! Welcome back to another episode of the Ruby on Rails podcast. It's March 16th, and I'm excited to catch up with you about what's been happening in the Rails codebase. Grab your favorite beverage because we've got some really thoughtful changes to explore today.
Let's start with the star of today's show - a fantastic enhancement to ActionText from Jorge Manrubia. Now, if you've been working with ActionText's block functionality, you might have noticed something limiting: you could either use the value argument OR a block for your editor content, but not both. It was an…
Well, Jorge just changed all that with a really elegant solution. The new approach separates these concerns beautifully - your value flows into the editor's content binding, while blocks now render as actual DOM children of the editor element. Think of it this way: the value is what goes into your hidden input or…
This might sound like a small change, but it opens up some exciting possibilities. You can now embed custom elements like prompt menus, toolbar extensions, or configuration elements right into your editor setup. It's especially powerful for folks building custom editors - like…
And…
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