Does Ruby on Rails Work With Sanity?
Rails works excellently with Sanity as a headless CMS backend, using Sanity's APIs to fetch structured content while Rails handles application logic and rendering.
Quick Facts
How Ruby on Rails Works With Sanity
Ruby on Rails integrates seamlessly with Sanity by treating Sanity as a headless CMS backend. Rails applications fetch structured content via Sanity's REST or GraphQL APIs, typically using gems like `httparty` or `graphql-client` to query content. This decouples content management from application code, allowing content editors to work independently while Rails developers focus on business logic, page rendering, and user interactions.
The typical architecture has Rails handling server-side rendering (traditional views + ActionView) or API responses for frontend frameworks. You can cache Sanity responses using Rails' built-in caching mechanisms to reduce API calls, and use Webhooks to invalidate cache when content changes. Rails' strong conventions around models, controllers, and views map naturally to content consumption—creating Ruby objects from Sanity's structured data is straightforward.
One key consideration: Rails isn't strictly necessary for a Sanity site (Next.js or static generators are popular), but it excels when you need server-side logic, authentication, database interactions, or complex business workflows alongside content. The pairing works particularly well for content-heavy applications requiring dynamic behavior.
Best Use Cases
Fetching Sanity Content in a Rails Controller
bundle add httparty# Gemfile
gem 'httparty'
# app/services/sanity_client.rb
class SanityClient
include HTTParty
base_uri 'https://api.sanity.io/v2021-10-21/data/query/production'
def self.fetch_posts
response = get('/', query: {
query: '*[_type == "post"] | order(publishedAt desc)',
token: ENV['SANITY_READ_TOKEN']
})
response['result']
end
end
# app/controllers/posts_controller.rb
class PostsController < ApplicationController
def index
@posts = Rails.cache.fetch('sanity_posts', expires_in: 1.hour) do
SanityClient.fetch_posts
end
end
endKnown Issues & Gotchas
Sanity API rate limits (500 requests/min on free tier) can cause issues during high-traffic periods without caching
Fix: Implement aggressive caching with Rails cache stores (Redis), use Sanity's webhook system to invalidate cache on content changes, and consider paid Sanity plans for production
Draft/published content states in Sanity require explicit API token management; accidentally exposing preview tokens exposes unpublished content
Fix: Use separate API tokens for preview vs production, store tokens in Rails secrets/credentials (not git), and implement proper environment-based configuration
GraphQL query performance can degrade with deeply nested Sanity document structures or large result sets
Fix: Use REST API with specific field projections for simple queries, implement pagination, and profile queries in Sanity's query performance tool
Rails' typical database-driven features (migrations, models) aren't applicable to content—requires mindset shift toward API-first thinking
Fix: Create lightweight Ruby objects/presenters to represent Sanity documents rather than forcing ActiveRecord models; use services to handle API communication
Alternatives
- •Next.js with Sanity - purpose-built for headless CMS, better real-time performance, smaller bundle
- •Django with Sanity - Python alternative with similar architecture, good for data-heavy applications
- •Strapi with Rails - self-hosted headless CMS, more control over backend but requires infrastructure management
Resources
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