How does Bootstrap work with Ruby on Rails? - ruby-on-rails

I'm unfamiliar with how Bootstrap is implemented on a web app built on Ruby on Rails. I've been asked to create the front-end ,HTML/CSS for new pages. I strictly have been working with small, static sites so I don't know the way to go about this. I've seen that the CSS files only include the specific code that your page requires?
Does that mean that I will have to copy each component's Boostrap CSS to a separate CSS file for my page?

You can choose one of the following gems to get all the required components of bootstrap in your rails application:
Twitter Bootstrap Rails
Less Rails Bootstrap
Furthermore detailed info to implement it on pages can be get # http://www.gotealeaf.com/blog/integrating-rails-and-bootstrap-part-1

Related

Bootstrap with Rails without LESS/SASS

I have a project of Rails 4 integrated with bootstrap.
I use less-rails-bootstrap gem in order to integrate it.
I wonder what is the best way to integrate bootstrap into rails without using less (os sass). I assume I can simply download the css and js files as explained in the bootstrap site, but I wonder if i might have problems with it.
Yes, if you don't want to customize Bootstrap styles, you can simply download it from bootstrap site and put it under vendor folder.
And you won't have problems, since Rails will precompile the files (js/css/img) under vendor folder.
Make sure to read this answer if you add fonts too.

What is the easiest way to integrate static pages into Rails project

I have a landing page that was passed to me by a designer, the Structure is like this
|_startup
|_common-files
|_css
|_fonts
|_icons
|_img
|_js
|_less
|_flat-ui
|_bootstrap
|_css
|_fonts
|_js
|_fonts
|_icons
|_img
|_js
|_less
|_ui-kit
|_static
|_css
|_less
index.html
I didn't type the whole structure, but the idea is, it's quite a bit of directory, and it might be tough to separate it into javascript, css, image assets, and fonts(I am not sure where fonts go). My thoughts are, should I just have a subdomain and put this about page? I do want to integrate the page into my rails project. My question is, is there an easy way to integrate an independent page into my rails project?
From the book Learn Ruby on Rails:
A Rails application can deliver static web pages just like an ordinary
web server. The pages are delivered fast and no Ruby code is required.
The Rails application server looks for any pages in the public folder
by default.
So you can drop the directory into your application public/ folder.

User custom theme support with rails assets pipeline

I have a rails app that allows users to create their own website easily but they share the same page structure.
I plan to switch my classic rails views for a templating language such as liquid or handlebars.
The goal is that my users could upload their own version of templates and css to completely customize the look and feel of their website.
Example of workflow :
User upload a theme folder containing Templates and Css files
Their website automatically uses this new templates and designs
Is it possible to do that and continue to take advantages of the Rails Assets pipeline?
Thanks a lot for your answers !
This might be something you can try: http://www.krautcomputing.com/blog/2012/03/27/how-to-compile-custom-sass-stylesheets-dynamically-during-runtime/.
I've used this in a Rails 3.2x project and it works fine, but I'm having difficulties getting it working in a different (somewhat modified Rails 4 project).
It's older article about compiling css on the fly using the Sprockets::StaticCompiler class.

How to add wrapbootstrap (made with twitter bootstrap) themes to rails application

The website https://wrapbootstrap.com/ has themes which were made using Twitter Bootstrap. Each of these themes include different versions of Twitter Bootstrap along with other various libraries and versions (jquery, fontawesome, etc...)
How do I add these themes to my existing Rails app? What are the steps?
I'm especially curious about the conflicts that may arrise if I'm already using a different version of jquery, twitter bootstrap, fontawesome, and others (as declared in the Gemfile).
Thank you
You can add the css from the theme you purchased from wrapbootstrap to your assets > application.css.scss file. And use the html tags that came with the theme in your rails app views so that the css styling is applied.
Also, I would recommend using gem 'sass-rails' to import the standard bootstrap styling.
Here's a tutorial to get you started with adding bootstrap to a rails app. Adding the theme css and html tags is up to you.
http://railscasts.com/episodes/328-twitter-bootstrap-basics?view=asciicast
I did this for few of the projects, I agree with majorly what Mike has answered above. Here are some of the gotchas I saw.
We started as a standard project on Rails all our views dynamic(Ember)/static were based on Bootstrap CSS. When major internal pages were up and functionality demonstrated we focused on landing pages. By this time we had the gems for bootstrap, fontawesome added to our Gemfile.
So one of the thing is to remove these gems "bootstrap", "fontawesome" from Gemfile. Include these as part of your wrapbootstrap dump.
Also as you progress with integration you may realize that a lot of common code is being repeated, its in your best interest to split the page components: headers, footers other things as partial Rails views. It severely saves the editing effort.
Another thing I found extremely useful to keep every thing up while you are still in integration stage, is to split your CSS/JS includes for pages imported from wrap bootstrap and pages you already have. So if you intend to migrate all existing pages into new theme scraping your CSS, then it can be merged in stages, otherwise you can let them co-exist.
You have to add new entries in routes.rb, controller calls to support the pages if you don't have them already. Likes of about, contactus, team etc. etc.
And if you use something like Ember/Backbone then you have to manage the co-existence of single pager app in some pages which may or may not be linked to the Wrapbootstrap pages.
This was all the things I had to take care off when I integrated the wrapbootstrap theme on top of Rails-EmberJS app.
Interesting timing as I just had to do this myself. I'm still fairly new to Rails so this might not be the best solution, but here's how I got it working ...
Note: every theme is different so this may not be a one size fits all approach.
1) My theme was built with Middleman and it was expecting to run stand alone or on a Sinatra instance.
2) In order to get the theme up on Rails, I had to add the compass gem, the sass gem, the sass-rails gem, and the compass-rails gem to work properly. I'm assuming you can install these (if required for your theme).
3) Assuming you have a Rails app ready to roll, go into your assets directory and backup your .js, .css, and all fonts and images. Place your theme asset files in the appropriate place.
4) Now do the same with your view layer. You may have a partials and/or pages folder which you can place in the views directory. You'll want to put application.erb.html and any navigation files in the layouts folder under the views directory. Again, make sure you back up your original files first.
5) If your theme was designed for Sinatra, you may have a Config.rb file. I moved the logic from this file into my config/environment.rb file. I was the least confident with this step. Other Rails devs can chime in if there is a better location.
6) Start your server up. You may encounter some exceptions but this is to be expected.
7) Take a look at your old app/assets/javascripts/application.js file and compare it to the new file. Ensure that the new file has the jquery ujs library included //= require jquery_ujs . Without this bit of magic your PUT and DELETE HTTP verbs won't work properly.
8) Path adjustments. My theme had the Font Awesome library included. In order to get it to work, I had to adjust the reference paths at the top of the font-awesome.scss file.
9) Finally, you'll need to debug the newly added code in the environment.rb file. The Sinatra developer was doing a lot of Route magic to adjust the navigation display. This wasn't porting over well to my environment. I removed many of these calls from my navigation template files. Once complete, my newly skinned app was up and running! Good luck.
make sure that while installing twitter bootstrap you should add following gem into your Gemfile under "group :assets"
gem 'therubyracer'
gem 'less-rails'
gem 'twitter-bootstrap-rails'
then run bundle command.
Now, the theme "file_name.css" (file_name could be any) that u have downloaded just add it into "stylesheets" folder under app->assests->stylesheets
then open your application.css file in same folder there you will see
*= require_tree.
replace this line with
*= require "file_name.css"
NOTE: Don't forget to re-compile your assets or simply delete the content of your tmp/cache folder.
save it and reboot your server. it will apply youe new theme.
Watch this training course which guide you to do so in detail and from scratch.
http://pluralsight.com/training/courses/TableOfContents?courseName=getting-started-aspdotnet-mvcservice-stack-bootstrap

How to use Bootstrap from Twitter in a Rails 3.0 application?

In my rails 3.0.10 I would like to use Bootstrap from Twitter but I only found examples using Rails 3.1 and the Asset Pipeline. How would add it to my 3.0 application? Do I just download it from the main site and put the files inside of my public folder? What about using LESS?
The absolute simplest way is to drop the boostrap.css file into your public folder and then reference it in your layouts/application.html.erb file. Then you can start using it right away. You're a bit limited at that point in what you can modify but that will get you started.
What is your question about LESS? bootstrap uses LESS but you don't have to worry about that since you're just using a plain ole css file.
See this railscasts video: Twitter Bootstrap Basics. There is another follow-up screencast after you finish this one.
We converted bootstrap to use SASS (think I found it in a github repo somewhere), and included it in the lib/assets/ folder.
Our application.css includes the partials. We've made a few custom modifications to the partials, works just fine.
Version 2 will be converted to SASS pretty sure I'm sure, but in the meantime there are asset pipeline modules available for LESS which you could add so that your rails app understands less files:
A quick search found this (can't vouch for it at all)
https://github.com/metaskills/less-rails
If it works as described you could just drop in bootstrap as it is and reference it in your application.css file.

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