write different HTML for ipad in index.html file only - ruby-on-rails

I have a rails site running done using the bootstrap. There's a mobile and tablet site for the same. Mobile and tablet site have completely same feature apart from having a slightly different index page.
I have used this railscast to load the app on the mobile device.
Is it possible to have another url like used in the article for tablets.
For eg for mobile, localhost:3000/pages/home?mobile=0
This is what can be used. Can we use something like this for tablets?
Like we write media queries for CSS, Is it possible that I write different HTML in mobile.html file and load that chunk of code for tabs, As I need a small change to the index page only.
Please suggest.

It has to be rails centric
You'll want to use request.user_agent:
if request.user_agent =~ /android|blackberry|iphone|ipad|ipod|iemobile|mobile|webos/i
## mobile
else
## not mobile
end
So you could do something like this:
#app/controllers/application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
def mobile?
request.user_agent =~ /android|blackberry|iphone|ipad|ipod|iemobile|mobile|webos/i
end
helper_method :mobile?
end
#app/views/pages/home.html.erb
<%= render "small_change" if mobile? %>
--
Some refs:
Rails 3 detect request coming from mobile clients
Rails way to detect mobile device?
Update
The above allows you to call the mobile? method in any view you need.
Because it's in the application controller, it has access to the request object (otherwise you'd have to pass it to the action each time).
So when you asked:
So where should I put that code in mobile's index.html. As I don't want to add other files
... there is no "mobile" index.html.erb. You can call the mobile? method in any view you need:
#app/views/pages/home.html.erb
<% if mobile? %>
.... do something here.
<% end %>

Less is more. Keep it simple. I propose a simple jquery/html/css solution. Have one and only one file. Modify the different areas of the html file via unique class names. In this case I have desktop coding or mobile coding. In your case you can split it up as you see fit, obviously by modifying the if statement shown below.
In html:
<main id="top_main" class="website_desktop">desktop content goes here.</main>
or
<main id="top_mobile" class="website_mobile">mobile content goes here.</main>
In script:
if( /Android|webOS|iPhone|iPad|iPod|BlackBerry|IEMobile|Opera Mini/i.test(navigator.userAgent) ) {
// display stuff for mobile
jQuery("#top_main").css("display", "none");
jQuery("#top_mobile").css("display", "block");
}else {
// hide all stuff for mobile, display desktop
jQuery("#top_mobile").css("display", "none");
jQuery("#top_main").css("display", "block");
}
ID's are used for script, classes are used for different CSS controls (in my example, mobile vs desktop)

Related

Show 'upgrade your browser' modal on every page

I would like to show a customized 'upgrade your browser' modal dialog to users if they visit any page on my website from an old browser.
I know how to detect the browser but - I cannot figure out where to put the code to show the modal and how to do it. Can ApplicationController before_filter render a js that calls .modal('show')? Any other way? Pure js?
This would be most appropriately solved using Javascript.
Detect the browser feature you need using Modernizr
If the Modernizr test fails, display a popover of some kind
Add modernizr.js to your project and insert this javascript into your application.js:
Modernizr.load([
{
test: Modernizr.cssgradients,
nope: function () { alert('Sorry, your browser does not support a required feature of this site. Please upgrade or use another browser.'); }
}
]);
Change "Modernizr.cssgradients" to whatever feature you need.
If you don't want to have this as a bare "alert", you could use something like noty.js, replacing the alert method above with:
noty({text: 'Sorry, your browser does not support a required feature of this site. Please upgrade or use another browser.'});
Place the div/modal in your layout file (app/views/layouts/application.html.erb, most likely), and wrap it in a rails conditional based on your needs, like so:
<body>
....
<% if (old_browsers.include?(current_browser) %>
<div class="old-browser-modal">
....
</div>
<% end %>
</body>

Embed web page coded in Ruby on Rails in another web site?

I would like to make my web page that I coded with Ruby on Rails as backend embeddable so that users are able to easily share it by copy and pasting some embed code. (much like YouTube embed code, but for a webpage)
Could someone point me to a tutorial or general direction how to go about doing so?
I'm planning to embed my web page in Joomla CMS.
Many thanks.
Pier.
Let's suppose you want to create a Widget for a mobile app store. The widget would allow to embed information of a certain app in any web page.
If we use the script tag, the embeddable code could look like this:
<script src="http://my_appstore.com/apps/1234.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
Where 1234 would be the id of the specific app we would like to embed.
If we use the iframe tag the code to put in other web pages could look like:
<iframe src="http://my_appstore.com/apps/1234" width="500" height="200" frameborder="0"></iframe>
First thing we have to decide is what kind of tag to use. Using and iframe tag is more straight forward but we are limited to use an iframe. Using an iframe is not a bad option but if you distribute this to third party web pages you won't be able to change that afterwards. Instead, it is preferable to use a script tag that will insert an iframe. This tag will also allow you to switch to embedding your content directly into pages if you choose to do so afterwards.
Inserting an iframe means that the proportions of your content have to be fixed and can't change to adapt to different window sizes in the parent window. Embedding your content directly doesn't have this problem but you have to be very careful with CSS and add style to all your elements because otherwise they will inherit the host page styles. Also embedding your content directly and then making AJAX calls will likely produce cross-browser request problems unless you use JSONP.
Let's first create a simple web page with Sinatra that we will use to embed our Rails Widget:
mkdir host_page
cd host_page
With your text editor create host.rb file inside host_page folder:
# host.rb
require 'sinatra'
get '/' do
erb :index
end
Create index.erb and launch host_page:
mkdir views
cat '<script src="http://localhost:3000/apps/1234.js" type="text/javascript"></script>' > views/index.erb
ruby host.rb
Now if we visit http://localhost:4567/ we see nothing but there will be a widget there soon.
Let's now create the rails app that will be embedded. Start with a new folder for your project and do:
rails new widget
cd widget/
rails g controller apps
rm app/assets/javascripts/apps.js.coffee
Add the needed routes:
# config/routes.rb
MyApp::Application.routes.draw do
resources :apps
end
Edit your apps controller:
# app/controllers/apps_controller.rb
class AppsController < ApplicationController
def show
#mobile_app = {
:title => "Piano Tutorial",
:descr => "Learn to play piano with this interactive app",
:rating => "*****"
}
end
end
In that controller we are always returning the same app. In a real situation we would have a model and the controller that would retrieve the appropriate app data from the model id found in params.
Create your javascript view and start the server:
echo 'document.write("<h3><%=#mobile_app[:title]%></h3><p><%=#mobile_app[:descr]%></p><p><em><%=#mobile_app[:rating]%></em><p>");' > app/views/apps/show.js.erb
rails server
And that's it. Go to http://localhost:4567/ and see your widget.
In case you want to use an iframe, replace the contents of your show.js.erb file with this:
document.write("<%=escape_javascript(content_tag(:iframe, '', :src => app_url(params['id'])).html_safe)%>");
Here we are using a content_tag but it could also be done in a way similar the previous one by just using the <iframe> tag as previously.
Obviously if we use an iframe, we are doing two calls, one to render the iframe and the other one to load the contents of that iframe. For this second call we are still missing an html view. Just create the view like that:
# app/views/apps/show.html.erb
<h3><%=#mobile_app[:title]%></h3>
<p><%=#mobile_app[:descr]%></p>
<p><em><%=#mobile_app[:rating]%></em><p>
Now you can point again to http://localhost:4567/ and see your widget inside an iframe.
A bit late, but I stumbled over this Question while searching for a solution by myself. I found a Gem that does exactly what's described. It will make your rails app embeddable like YouTube Videos or Content from other Webpages like Google Maps, Instagram, Twitter… It's called EmbedMe
To use you simply need to change your Routes to define, which Paths need to be embeddable
get 'private', to: 'application#private'
embeddable do
get 'embeddable', to: 'application#embeddable'
end
Gem on Github or Documentation
In case anyone is coming across this now, almost 9 years later...
If you use the JavaScript method, you'll have to allow Cross-Origin requests, like #abessive mentioned in their comment above. I was able to do this by adding this to the top of my controller class:
protect_from_forgery except: :method
where :method is the method that will be called for the embed request.
Here's my controller:
class PagesController < ApplicationController
protect_from_forgery except: :home
def home
render 'index.js'
end
end
And the relevant route in routes.rb:
get "index.js", to: "pages#home"
And I have views/pages/index.js.erb with some JS code that renders the widget.
(I'm using Rails 6.1.4)

Backbone without Hashes?

I think I'm trying to use Backbone in an unintended way, and I couldn't really find much on it. Basically I have a Rails app that is serving up the views. I want to keep the regular navigation (as in page reloading), but let backbone see the route and setup certain parts of the templates on that page, handle the models, and all of that good stuff. So basically I'm using Backbone to handle all of my complicated javascript without making it a "single page app". Would enabling PushState break my absolute paths in older browsers? eg: "http://localhost:3000/projects" matching the route "projects".
PushState will not work in old browsers like IE6, but you could use different technique, for example you could use jQuery selectors and check whether you're on the particular page:
if ($('#login-page').length > 0) {
// we're on the login page
// ..initialize login page related backbone collections and views
}
..or you could store action/controller name somewhere in the html using data attribute: <body data-action="edit" data-controller="post"> and check it in javascript va4 $body = $('body'); if ($body.data('action') == 'edit' && $body.data('controller') == 'posts') {} etc.
..or you could have separate js file for each action/controller pair and include it on demand.

How do you handle widgets in rails?

StackOverflow, for example, has a user's reputation displayed up top. Clearly, this is grabbed from the database, and it's displayed on every page. Of course, this isn't in every controller action on every page, because that would be incredibly redundant.
How do you handle this kind of situation in rails? The only way I can think of it is to use before_filters to pass the models into the page, but that just seems like abuse of that feature. There seems to be the cells gem that does what I want, but I'd imagine this is a common problem and there must be a simple solution for it in rails without having to resort to plugins or gems.
What you are looking for is the layout. In rails this is where you define headers, footers, and sidebars that frame your site. Look for app/views/layouts/application.html.erb in your generated rails code. Towards the bottom you will see:
<body>
<%= yield %>
</body>
The yield is where rest of the app gets invoked. Everything before and after the yield will appear on every page. So, using your example, you might query the database and set the instance variable #reputation in the application controller:
#reputation = User.find( current_user ).reputation
then display it in the layout like this:
<body>
<%= #reputation %>
<%= yield %>
</body>
This is covered thoroughly in the book "Agile Web Development With Rails". If you are going to develop in Rails I recommend getting the latest edition.
I would just make a partial with the widget in it and render it in the layout(s) where you want it to appear. Let it do whatever it needs to do, eg connect to the db, run some js to connect to an external site, etc.
If you're concerned about optimisation then deal with it when it becomes a problem.
I guess, you can put the code you need into a view helper. And then render some partial, like it was said before, in the layouts where you want it to appear, calling helper's function.
Look here:
Rails view helpers in helper file

Adding content to static files(pages)

I have several static files(pages), which are basically copies of my website pages source code, with the content changed.
These files support my website, (keeping the same format) in various ways.
For example the menu part is:-
<body>
<div id="menu">
<ul class="level1" id="root">
etc
etc. until
</ul>
</div>
Unfortunately every month or so my menu bar changes and I have to update each static file manually.
As each of my static files have the same menu.
Is it possible to have one menu file which can be updated and have the static files load them automatically.
I plan to have several more static files. So this would be a great help if someone can suggest how to accomplish this.
Oh yes. Use some javascript magic to load the menu bar upon page load and keep it in menu.html.
One solution may be to use a spider (wget --recursive) to download generated pages directly from your application. One command, and you have the full copy of your site. (just add some useful options, like --convert-links, for example).
The other option may be to write an after_filter in your controller, and write the generated content to a file (not always, but for example when you add a parameter ?refresh_copy=1). Maybe just turning on page caching would be suitable? But the problem will be that you will not be able to trigger the controller action so easily.
If you don't want the whole site copied, just add some specific routes or controllers (/mirrorable/...) and run the spider on them, or just access them manually (to trigger saving the content in the files).
I ended up creating one controller without a model.
rails g controller staticpages
I then created a layout file which imported the individual changes to the layout, via a "yield" tied to a "content_for" in the view files(static files(pages) in the "view of staticpages" (for example abbreviations, aboutthissite etc etc).
The rest of the static file loaded with the usual "yield" in the layout. Works a treat. No more updating the menu bar all done automatically.
To get to the correct static file I created a route using:-
match 'static/:static_page_name'=> 'staticpages#show' (or in rails 2.x:-
map.connect 'static/:static_page_name', :controller=> "staticpages", :action=> "show"
"static_page_name" variable accepted anything after "/static/" in the url and passed it to the controller "staticpages" in which I set up a show action containing:-
def show
#static_page_name = params[:static_page_name]
allowed_pages = %w(abbreviations aboutthissite etc, etc,)
if allowed_pages.include?(#static_page_name)
render #static_page_name
else
redirect_to '/' #redirects to homepage if link does not exists
end
end
I then only had to change the links in the website. (e.g.<%= link_to " About This Site ", '/static/aboutthissite' %>)
and viola! its all working.

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