I purchased a nice-looking Twitter Bootstrap them online that is going to spice up my Rails 3.2.8 application. The package contains the following directories:
/css
/img
/js
Of course these files will have relative links to each other in them. Is there a standard way of integrating this type of stuff into the asset pipeline, or is it still a standard practice to put it under public?
You'll want to use the asset pipeline. Everything is moving that direction and it's really not any harder (except when it is). Your files will go in the /app/assets/ directory.
For the css, you should be able to drop it right into app/assets/stylesheets/, just be sure that bootstrap is included first. There are several gems that make it easy to include bootstrap's files. I use bootstrap-sass, but you might also try twitter-bootstrap-rails (depends on if you want sass support or not). With either one, look at the readmes that I linked to as they include some useful details you'll want to know for each gem.
For the javascript, it should be about the same thing. In your application.js file, be sure that bootstrap is include before //= require_tree . in case the theme adds any custom javascript. Both of the gems I listed before also include the javascript files for bootstrap. You can read their documentation to see the details (it's almost exactly the same as normal for both gems).
As far as images are concerned, put them in the app/assets/images/ directory and you'll have to change the stylesheets a bit for it to work. When an image is declared in the stylesheet, like background: url('./images/bg.jpg');, you'll need to use the image_path helper instead, so it would look like background: url(image_path('bg.jpg'));. Notice I just included the name of the image. The asset pipeline will automatically parse this to the correct path for you.
If the theme includes any custom fonts, you'll do the same as images except using the asset_path helper like so in your #font-face declaration:
url(asset-path('museo700.ttf', font));
There are also type-specific helpers you can use, such as font-path, image-path, etc. Either asset-path with a type declared or the type-specific helper will work, just be consistent with which one you use so as not to produce confusion.
You can place custom fonts in a directory something like app/assets/fonts/. The asset pipeline will automatically find them, since they're in the assets directory.
Related
Image showing my rails structure for react
I have a lot of react components and wish to simply keep them better organized. So I'll cut to the chase and just ask. Is it possible to put my react components in directories and if so- how do I select them in a view and other react components?
I've already tried a few variatians like the one below without success and fear that it's simply not possible? Can't find any documentation about this either.
<%= react_component('OutfitCreate.Images') %>
Edit: To clarify, I want to make it clear that I'm using a typical rails project structure, and for react I am making use of the react-rails gem to handle my components as well as generating them.
Edit2: To clarify further, what I'm seeking is a way to target a react component by directory as such:
<%= react_component('<directory>/<classname>') %>
where each directory will be sub directories of "components".
I know this is an old question but maybe it helps anyone. You can do it like this:
<%= react_component "ComponentFolder/ComponentClassName" %>
It works just fine with rails-react and webpacker.
I recently used the react-rails gem and had a good experience. It takes care of accessing your components in Rails templates and does a few other nice things.
To answer your question specifically, you can put your components inside as many directories as you like as long as you follow the gem docs. The gem provides a view helper that allows you to render a specific component, and to pass data to it as props (the helper takes a hash which becomes the component's props).
Edit -- I'm not sure if you're already using the gem, the helper method you are using looks like it, but you don't specifically mention it. Perhaps there is a problem with the gem installation and/or setup. You need to edit application.js and also to run the generator task: rails g react:install
Edit -- To make sure you can access components in the components subdirectory, you should do the following things:
*run the generator: rails g react:install
*make sure the generated components.js file contains: //= require_tree ./components
*make sure your application.js file contains:
//= require react
//= require react_ujs
//= require components
React components will be considered global, because all .js will be minified in one single big .js file. So, you will have to take some considerations.
First, in your sprockets file (Normally application.js) you need to tell Rails to serve the React Components you want. The easy way would be to require all folders and files in components folder, because all your components will be there, but organized in subfolders. This is made adding the next line:
// File: app/assets/javascripts/application.js
//= require_tree ./components
Second, if you want to use your React component named for example Images, which could be defined in ../components/folder/images.js, you just could use in your Rails View the helper react_component('Images') like usual.
React will find the Images component if it match with the Images component you defined inside some served .js (But a sane human will expect you defined the Image Component inside some images.js) because this name Images is global (Remember? One big .js file will be served).
With this approach, the client will download only one big .js file with all your React Components. Bad for download speed, but could be cached.
So, here, you would have to take care to name all components with a different name each one.
Now, if you have for example a component named Foo inside ../components/folder/doesnt_matter.js and another component with the same name Foo, but inside ../components/another_folder/this_neither.js, you will have to tell Rails which file do you want to serve for the specific View you want to render to evade collision name problems.
This means, you could make the client to download only the needed js code (and the needed React Components) for the rendered page. It will be downloading .js files for each page, losing the cache possibility.
One intermediate way to do this, would be to serve a middle sized .js file for all the views in the same controller.
To do this, you could organize your js (or jsx, or ...) in a way you could have a place for common Components (which are used in two or more controllers), and a specific folder for each controller with specific React Components in there.
First, you will have to replace the previously added //require_tree ./components in application.js with //require ./components/common/ for serving only the common React components to All Views.
Second, in your layout, you could serve two js files; an application.js and a #{controller_name}.js (This means, one specific .js file per controller).
Third, for each controller, you will have a .js file with the same name. So, supose you have a controller called home_controller, then, you will need to have a home.js (controller_name helper in layout view will make rails to look for this file) and in it, using sprockets again, you will serve specific React Components with //require ./components/home/
In this way, you will have to take care of your organization, and the React Components Names need to differ with the ones inside .../components/common/.
If you want to be more specific yet, you could use the same technique in layout in combination with controller_name and action_name helpers. Or you could use content_for asking for the specific .js files that have the React Components the View needs.
However, you need to be carefull because i don't know how crazy the Assets Pipeline could turn against you. Specially using content_for.
I found a nice template online and want to use it for my rails app homepage. I decided to use the high voltage gem and read through its readme. I managed to get the routing right but I could not find the appropriate path/folder for the numerous asset (css, js, svgs and sass) files which come inside the template zip file, and which obviously make it look nice.
I tried putting them into the assets folder of my rails app, which got some of the "features" working, but svgs and images didn't display... and it screwed my existing pages. Reading through the Rails documentation I then tried storing the template assets into the vendor folder, which did not work either.
Where should I store the assets for my template-inspired homepage for them not to screw the appearance of my normal/app pages? Which paths should I use in my html to call them?
If you have troubles with images, take a look at image references in the template source. You can see a reference to image like this :
background-image: url('images/top-1280.svg')
which would not serve this image in Rails.
I would suggest to find and replace all the image references in your css (or scss) files.
Try this :
background-image: url(image-path('top-1280.svg'));
which is the proper way for Rails 4.
The differences:
in Rials you have a helper method "image-path" and you do not prefix the image file with directory name.
It is important to check in your "app/assets/stylesheets/appilcation.css" if there are lines like:
*= require_tree .
*= require_self
Now about Font Awesome : I see that in this theme you are about to use Font Awesome. I would suggest using the gem for Rails:
In your Gemfile:
gem 'font-awesome-sass'
I think the theme you have chosen is very nice. Thank you for sharing it, it will be useful for my current project.
I work with front-end designers that give me a bunch of HTML & CSS files. There are some things that are very straight forward - like CSS for Twitter Bootstrap or any other framework.
But when the designer has created a bunch of other stylesheets, should I just include them in the stylesheets directory or should I just copy all the styles to the main application.css file?
Is this just a matter of style or does my approach really (or not) matter with the asset pipeline?
Thanks.
The approach doesn't usually matter, but it can matter if you do not want to include everything in one stylesheet link on the final page. I'd strongly recommend keeping the stylesheets separated for the same reason you keep code separated. Easier maintenance, less conceptual overhead per file, and easier to find where to make the change you need to make.
Even though they get combined by the asset pipeline, I tend to do one stylesheet per controller, or component, with certain shared styles (navigation, forms, common UI forms) in their own file. I haven't found the perfect solution yet (I still struggle with wanting "DRYer" stylesheets), but this works pretty well.
application.css is ment to organize css file, i remember there are comments on the top of the application.css telling not to directly write css file inside it. You should create a new css file for those style-sheet content your front-end guy gave you. And as application.css will include all the files under the stylestheet folder automatically. It will work.
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
I would like to know what are the best ways to organise CSS code in Rails project?
I'm interested in how you do it and why.
If you would like to break up your css into multiple files during development you can add cache => true to stylesheet_link_tag and rails will automatically concatenate them into a single file in production. This also works for javascript_include_tag.
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/layouts_and_rendering.html#linking-to-javascript-files-with-javascript_include_tag
Generally, you should not have the client download a massive amount of CSS snippets, but pack them into a single file on the server to avoid rendering latencies. So you have the tradeoff of having functionality divided up into multiple files put wanting to send only one file to the client.
You could use SASS to have each piece of code inside a single include file and just include all of them together. This gives you the added advantage of mixins (kind of like macros) and variables among other awesome things.
Another possibility would be to use plain CSS and use something like Jammit to pack the stuff up to send to the client.
Regarding actual setups, I tend to have one file resetting the styles to a known default, a file for the basic layout (columns, default spaces, ...), and one file each for each area of concern for your specific design (headers, buttons, ...)
James and Holger's answers are very good.
Besides organizing CSS in my projects, I also had to change colour schemes a couple of times..
Trying to do consistent changes throughout many CSS files can be pretty painful (results may vary).
I ended up extending the Rails start-up procedure a little, to include a custom module "site_settings.rb"
through which I can define variable for colors and other CSS attributes, which I can then use throughout my CSS input files.
Whenever Rails starts up, and one of the input files has changed, it auto-generates the CSS files.
http://unixgods.org/~tilo/Ruby/Using_Variables_in_CSS_Files_with_Ruby_on_Rails.html
Since Rails 3.1 is out and sprockets replaced Jammit, here an excerpt form the Rails guides concerning the asset organization:
Asset Organization
Assets can be placed inside an application in one of three locations: app/assets, lib/assets or vendor/assets.
app/assets is for assets that are owned by the application, such as custom images, JavaScript files or stylesheets.
lib/assets is for your own libraries’ code that doesn’t really fit into the scope of the application or those libraries which are shared across applications.
vendor/assets is for assets that are owned by outside entities, such as code for JavaScript plugins.