added documentation for the steps taken to upgrade rails and add javascript unit testing

doc/2021-10-18-UpgradingRails.md

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+# Upgrading rails
+
+## Guides
+
+- Get a diff between two different versions of rails - <https://railsdiff.org/5.1.7/5.2.6>
+- Official transition guide provided by rails - <https://guides.rubyonrails.org/upgrading_ruby_on_rails.html#upgrading-from-rails-5-1-to-rails-5-2>
+
+## Rails Upgrade
+
+- change rails version number to 5.2
+  - delete Gemfile.lock
+  - `bundle install`
+  - fix broken tests.
+    - An SQL query asking for an average was returning a nil.  Check for nil in percent_for method
+  - fix deprecation warnings
+- change rails version number to 6.0.4.1
+  - fix broken tests
+    - change method name update_attributes to update
+    - template error.  Change syntax for render method
+  - fix deprecation warnings
+- run rails migration - Creates new tables for ActiveStorage data
+  - `bundle exec rake db:migrate`
+- Attempt to generate credentials file for each environment
+  - The syntax to generate this did not work
+- Run the rake update task.
+  - `bin/rails app:update`
+- Update rails to 6.1 on the theory the syntax might have been added in a later version
+  - fix broken tests
+  - fix deprecation warnings
+- Update system software on my machine
+- Generate credentials file for each environment
+- modify heroku mciea-beta app settings
+  - change RAILS_ENV=production to RAILS_ENV=staging
+
+## Javascript testing
+
+- add esbuild gem 'jsbundling-rails'.  Unified installer for webpacker rollup and esbuild
+  - `bin/bundle install`
+  - `bin/rails javascript:install:esbuild
+- clear the tmp directory to make sure asset compilation with esbuild does not complain about missing file templates
+  - bundle exec rake tmp:clear
+- move javascript files to new location
+  - app/assets/javascript => app/javascript
+  - I deleted the channels directory from app/assets/javascript but that caused problems with sprockets which expects the directory to exist even if it's empty.  Added the directory back, but git does not recognize empty directory as a change.  I added a .keep file in the channels directory so I could create a new git commit.
+  - sprockets continues to bundle our scss files and images
+- add missing dependencies to package.json.
+  - turbolinks
+  - actioncable
+  - activestorage
+  - ujs
+- I did not wire up Action Cable
+- `yarn install`
+- Modify javascript files to implement exports
+  - import those files into application.js
+- Default jest environment does not allow for DOM interactions.  Change default test environment to jsdom
+  - yarn jest --env=jsdom
+- install node on heroku
+  - heroku buildpacks:set heroku/ruby
+  - heroku buildpacks:add --index 1 heroku/nodejs
+- Fix dependabot alerts
+  - upgrade puma
+  - upgrade nokogiri
+- Update README
+- Generate binstubs for rspec
+
+## Summary
+
+- `bundle install`
+- `bundle exec rake db:migrate`
+- `yarn install`
+- Optional: if you encounter problems `bundle exec rake tmp:clear`
+- `yarn test`
+- `yarn build --watch`
+- `bin/rails s`
+