I am building a simple invoice application, and I would like to allow the users to customize the text on the invoice. In addition to this, they should be able to reference specific attributes in my models, i.e. "This is a test {{Model.attribute}}", and once the text is parsed the tag is replaced with the value of that attribute.
I have looked a bit at redcloth, textile and handlebars, but it does look like a little bit overkill to be honest. For instance I would not like to allow the users to input any HTML.
I would really appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction. There is probably a gem for this that I just havent found yet.
Thanks in advance
I use liquid with simpleformat which will sanitise the text.
Related
I would like to know how to implement a textfield for TAGS in ROR?
like the ones used in stack overflow, or at emails where you type a text and after you hit space it capsules it.
I would appreciate any gem or any info about the matter.
example1:
example2:
Thanks
Please have a look at chosen.
I.e. give the multi-select example a try.
Add the "chzn-select" class to the multi-select requiring the tagging behavior.
And in your javascript, invoke the chosen initialization method, $(".chzn-select").chosen();
I'm trying to expose a search feature in rails. I want a user to be able to enter a string like name:"john" color:"blue" and get a list of ActiveRecord objects for some model that have a name attribute containing john and a color attribute containing blue. I'd also like them to be able to use and and or and parentheses e.g. name:"john" or color:"blue" or (name:"john" color:"blue") or name:"bill". Ideally they could also use things like age<20 where age is an numeric field. Is there a rails plugin that does this. I've was looking briefly at sphinx and ferret both of which seem to create an api for this but it was unclear whether they provided a clear text based option or if I would need to parse the search strings myself.
Ernie's Ransack gem is a good place to start.
You will have to provide an intermediate layer between your submitted form and the Ransack code (this would be a good idea anyway for security reasons) to convert strings from the format you desire to something Ransack can understand.
If you check the demo page and the documentation for the gem you'll find it's quite simple to create the sort of queries you're after.
Watch how GET requests are generated from the conditions you build and in your application replace the builder Ernie has in the demo with a single textfield accepting strings like (name:"john" color:"blue") or name:"bill". Do some pattern matching when this field is submitted and build a proper querystring to pass onto the Ransack gem.
Edit
For future questions like "what's a popular gem for ______?", check out The Ruby Toolbox. If Ransack doesn't suit your needs, perhaps a gem in the Rails Search category has what you're looking for. I personally use Ransack for exactly what you're describing; providing a custom query interface for my application's User model.
I'd suggest doing your own search class. I find that for each app I do, the needs of search change considerably and it's simple enough to create a search app that considers all the variables you might want in a search query, posed against any number of classes you want to search.
In your Search class, have it return a collection, in the order you desire, and the collection can be made up of object instances that the searcher may desire.
I would like to be able to set things like the page title and <meta> description from within HAML “pages” served up by my static page controller.
Is there a good way to do this? Ideally, I see it working something like:
Name files like about_us.html.haml.yaml
Use the normal render method
But now there is a hash of metadata available to my controller and layout templates, which set various headers and elements, respectively.
Thoughts?
(Since no one contributed a full answer)
If you want to set up title, description, noindex or similar tags in the head, then github.com/kpumuk/meta-tags is the best way to do it! I've used in a various projects, and think it's best gem ever for manipulating with title, description and other stuff that sits in the head tag.
— Dmitry Polushkin
It seems to work well for me, though it is a touch less powerful than what my question was looking for. Further answers welcome.
I want to create a tagging system like seen here on Stack Overflow or on Quora. It'll be its own model, and I'm planning on using this autocomplete plugin to help users find tags. I have a couple of questions:
I want tags to be entirely user-generated. If a user inputs a new tag by typing it and pressing an "Add" button, then that tag is added to the db, but if a user types in an existing tag, then it uses that one. I'm thinking of using code like this:
def create
#video.tags = find_or_create_by_name(#video.tags.name)
end
Am I on the right track?
I'd like to implement something like on Stack Overflow or Quora such that when you click a tag from the suggested list or click an "Add" button, that tag gets added right above the text field with ajax. How would I go about implementing something like that?
I know this is kind of an open-ended question. I'm not really looking for the exact code as much as a general nudge in the right direction. Of course, code examples wouldn't hurt :)
Note I am NOT asking for help on how to set up the jQuery autocomplete plugin... I know how to do that. Rather, it seems like I'll have to modify the code in the plugin so that instead of the tags being added inside the text field, they are added above the text field. I'd appreciate any direction with this.
mbleigh's acts_as_taggable_on gem is a feature-complete solution that you should definitely look into a little more closely. The implementation is rock-solid and flexible to use. However, it is mostly concerned with attaching tags to objects, retrieving tags on objects, and searching for tagged items. This is all backend server stuff.
Most of the functionality you are looking to change (based on your comments) is actually related more to your front-end UI implementation, and the gem doesn't really do much for you there. I'll take your requests one-by-one.
If user inputs a new tag, that tag
gets added, if user inputs an
existing tag, the existing tag gets
used. acts_as_taggable_on does this.
Click a tag from suggested list to
add that tag. This is an
implementation issue - on the
back-end you'll need to collect the
suggested list of tags, then display
those in your presentation as links
to your processing function.
Autocomplete as user enters
potential tag. You'll use the jQuery
autocomplete plugin against a list
of items pulled off the tags table.
With additional jQuery, you can
capture when they've selected one of
the options, or completed entering
their new tag, and then call the
processing function.
Restrict users to entering only one
tag. This will be your UI
implementation - once they've
entered or selected a tag, you
process it. If they enter two words
separated by a comma, then before or
during processing you have to either
treat it as one tag, or take only
the text up to the first comma and
discard the rest.
When you process the addition of a
tag, you will have to do two things.
First, you'll need to handle the UI
display changes to reflect that a
tag has been entered/chosen. This
includes placing the tag in the
"seleted" area, removing it from the
"available" display, updating any
counters, etc. Second, you'll need
to send a request to the server to
actually add the tag to the object
and persist that fact to the
database (where the taggable gem will take over for you). You can either do this via
an individual AJAX request per tag,
or you can handle it when you submit
the form. If the latter, you'll need
a var to keep the running list of
tags that have been added/removed
and you'll need code to handle
adding/removing values to that var.
For an example of saving tags while editing but not sending to server/db until saving a form, you might take a look at the tagging functionality on Tumblr's new post page. You can add/remove tags at will while creating the post, but none of it goes to the database until you click save.
As you can see, most of this is on you to determine and code, but has very little to do with the backend part. The gem will take care of that for you quite nicely.
I hope this helps get you moving in the right direction.
The more I try to force the acts-as-taggable-on gem to work the more I think these are fundamentally different types of problems. Specifically because of aliases. The gem considers each tag to be its own special snowflake, making it difficult to create synonyms. In some cases it doesn't go far enough, if you want the Tag to have a description you'd need to edit the given migrations (which isn't hard to do).
Here's what I'm considering implementing, given the trouble I've had implementing via the gem. Let's assume you want to create a tagging system for Technologies.
Consider the following psuedo code, I haven't yet tested it.
rails g model Tech usage_count::integer description:text icon_url:string etc. Run the migration. Note the
Now in the controller you will need to increment usage_count each time something happens, the user submits a new question tagged with given text.
rails g model Name::Tech belongs_to:Tech name:string
Name::Tech model
belongs_to :tech
end
Then you could search via something like:
search = Name::Tech.where("name LIKE :prefix", prefix: "word_start%")
.joins(:tech)
.order(usage_count: desc)
.limit(5)
This is starting point. It's fundamentally different from the gem, as each tag is just a string on its own, but references a richer data table on the back end. I'll work on implementing and come back to update with a better solution.
Ok, so you know how you ask a question here, and in the "Tags" field you can enter several space-separated tags into a single text field?
I'm trying to replicate similar behavior in my Rails app. Except instead of questions, I'm doing a blog app (which has "posts"), and tagging those.
I'm using "form_for" to build the quick form. Inside of that I have the line:
f.text_field :tags
The problem I'm running into is, "tags" is not a field on my Post class. My Post class HABTM tags. So, somehow I need to parse the tags text field (using String.split), and pass the resulting tag Strings into my controller, so my controller can create and associated the tags along with the new blog post.
Is using "form_for" not going to work in this case? Is doing this sort of behavior beyond the design of the quick-and-dirty "form_for" functionality?
Thanks!
Unless you really want to reinvent the wheel, I would suggest using a plugin for this. ActsAsTaggableOnSteroids is a mature one. http://svn.viney.net.nz/things/rails/plugins/acts_as_taggable_on_steroids
Agree with Ben on this - there's lots of great plugins and features/helpers that make them simple to use. And you can learn a lot about how to do this in a well-designed way. Here's another good choice.
http://github.com/mbleigh/acts-as-taggable-on