I've run into a problem I'm completely unsure how to approach.
I have an app for sharing architectural photos. Users have_many Photos, and users can create Collections which also have_many Photos.
Now I have one customer who is a big name in the industry who would like to work with me to create a totally customized Collection with a very different look and feel from "regular" collections, but essentially the same functionality underneath. I'd like to accommodate this request, but I really have no idea how to do it.
Given that I already have a functioning Collection model and CollectionsController, plus all the views, I'd like to re-use as much of that as possible. So, for instance, the custom Collection needs to override the user facing :show view, but not the admin :edit view.
How would you approach something like this?
I'm trying to understand the most efficient, DRY method for creating a completely custom UI for a single record in the database. I'd be very appreciative of suggestions, including links to articles / books etc, as I haven't been able to find much in this area.
I would allow the creation of Liquid view templates associated with a User and/or Collection (if you want both - per-user templates with per-collection variations - use a polymorphic association) and of course fall back to your default view (also built with Liquid for consistency and reference) for all cases where no custom template is found.
Edit to add suggested details:
Any custom templates should be stored in the database (I would add a test/preview function so the user entering a custom template has the chance to verify their template before publishing it):
# Table name custom_templates
# id :integer
# templatable_type :string
# templatable_id :integer
# contents :text
class CustomTemplate < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :templatable, :polymorphic => true
end
class User
has_one :custom_template, :as => :templatable
end
class Collection
has_one :custom_template, :as => :templatable
end
In your controller action, look for a custom template:
custom_template = #collection.custom_template
custom_template ||= #user.custom_template
#custom_template = Liquid::Template.parse(custom_template.contents) if custom_template
In your view, either render the custom template or your default template partial:
<% if #custom_template -%>
<%= #custom_template.render(_hash_of_objects_to_pass_to_liquid_template_) %>
<% else -%>
<%= render :partial => 'default' %>
<% end -%>
Related
The goal is to generate views for given class that are personalised to a given user.
Model and Controller logic remain the same, but the layout and record presentation would be subject to user preferences.
Given the unicity of User.id it is readily available to create application_controller logic to use a layout with that id.
layout = #user.layout
The layout would be able to invoke its personalised CSS.
But what of the views? and the routing? Given a class Product how can the
resources :products
invoke a subdirectory of app/views/products to use that of the user's id, say
app/views/products/10
Thus leading to a structure of files
app/views/products/10/show.html.erb
app/views/products/10/edit.html.erb
app/views/products/10/index.html.erb
app/views/products/11/show.html.erb
app/views/products/11/edit.html.erb
app/views/products/11/index.html.erb
app/views/products/12/show.html.erb
app/views/products/12/edit.html.erb
app/views/products/12/index.html.erb
Answering your question you have call render in each method in the controller.
def show
...
render "user/show/#{params[:id]}.html.erb"
end
You have more info here: https://guides.rubyonrails.org/layouts_and_rendering.html#using-render
But, unless they are TOTALLY different it would be better using the same view for every record and keeping a field for each one with options to manipulate the view.
#user.layout = {header: true, footer: false, ...}
And in the view:
<% if #user.layout[:header] %>
<div>....</div>
<% end %>
We will soon be rewriting a 5 year old rails app, with a very unsound code foundation, from scratch in a brand new Rails 3 app with all the new hotness. The current app has a substantial custom admin UI backend which depends on now admin frameworks at all. Just some base controller classes and some somewhat useful CSS conventions. But maintaining that UI is a lot of work, especially if we want it to look half way nice.
So I'm in the market for an Admin UI framework that will make the simple stuff trivial, but without getting the way of more complex customization in both form and function.
The top contender, ActiveAdmin, seems to be very popular, and after playing with it a bit I have some concerns. It seems to declare a whole unique DSL that exists in a single ruby file. This is kind of neat, but it's also a completely different than how most other Rails apps are architected. It abstracts away the view, the helper the controller, and gives you a pure ruby DSL. It seems to me that this would get in the way of doing tricky things, more advanced custom things in our admin views. DSL's are great, until you want to do something they don't explicitly support.
Example "Resource" from my experimentation, with no controller and no view.
ActiveAdmin.register Region do
menu parent: "Wines"
show title: :name
index do
column(:zone) { |o| link_to o.zone, admin_region_path(o) }
column(:name) { |o| link_to o.name, admin_region_path(o) }
default_actions
end
end
So, the questions:
Is not being based on the standard Rails MVC architecture in separate files, and the typical controller inheritance based implementation of an admin area, actually something I should be concerned about? Will it hamper extensibility in the long term?
Is the DSL in ActiveAdmin better and more flexible than I'm giving it credit for?
Should I be looking at some other framework that lends itself better to my goals of high customization?
Should I stop being lazy and roll my own?
Does the choice of Mongoid instead of MySQL as a database affect any of the above questions?
It is worth mentioning that in ActiveAdmin you can also create your own complex forms by using partials
form partial: 'my_form'
and expand controller functions with a controller block.
controller do
def edit
end
def index
end
end
+1 for active admin, I use it in many projects, including a cms I'm building. It indeed is more flexible than many people who are newer with it give it credit for, at the end of the day you can always do:
controller do
def custom_action
Puts "hi"
end
end
(Think that's the right syntax writing from phone so all this is off top of head)
Also, I swear by inherited resources, which active admin controllers extend, as they really force you (in a good way) into writing restful, reuse able code. Bottom line is I believe active admin is leaps and bounds ahead of the others I've tried (railsadmin and at least one other)
Update:
Sure, here is the inherited_resources documentation
https://github.com/josevalim/inherited_resources
And here is an example of modifying the controller directly, from my little CMS project.
ActiveAdmin.register Channel do
index do
column :title
column :slug
column "Fields" do |channel|
"#{link_to('View Fields', admin_channel_entry_fields_path(channel))} #{link_to 'Add Field', new_admin_channel_entry_field_path(channel)}".html_safe
end
column "Actions" do |channel|
"#{link_to('View Entries', admin_channel_entries_path(channel))} #{link_to 'Create Entry', new_admin_channel_entry_path(channel)}".html_safe
end
default_actions
end
form :html => { :enctype => "multipart/form-data" } do |f|
f.inputs "Channel" do
f.input :title
f.input :display_name
f.input :image
end
f.buttons
end
controller do
def begin_of_association_chain
current_site
end
def tags
query = params[:q]
if query[-1,1] == " "
query = query.gsub(" ", "")
ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag.find_or_create_by_name(query)
end
#tags = ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag.all
#tags = #tags.select { |v| v.name =~ /#{query}/i }
respond_to do |format|
format.json { render :json => #tags.collect{|t| {:id => t.name, :name => t.name }}}
end
end
end
end
Basically, I am using the inherited resources, begin_of_association_chain method (one of my favorite things about IR), to scope all the data within channels, or any of the admin resources that inherit from my channels resource, to the current site, without having a url like /admin/sites/1/channels -- Because I am already setting current_site based on the url the visitor enters with. -- Anyways, basically once you are inside:
controller do
puts self.inspect
end
Returns the actual controller itself, e.g. Admin::ChannelsController (which < InheritedResources::Base, maybe not directly but all the IH controller methods should be available at this point).
I am just starting to pick up Ruby on Rails. I rather like it, but I ran into a roadblock. I know of two ways to solve a problem but I am curious as to what the "Rails Way" to do this is.
The Setup
I have an index page that lists project descriptions. When a user clicks on a project it brings them to the show function of the projects controller. Projects in the list are loaded from a MySQL database.
What I Want To Do
I want to be able to load project specific information on each "Project Page." This information consists of documentation, code examples, etc. Each page will have the same general template.
Way 1
Store the HTML and text in the MySQL database in a "Sections" table and load all the sections related to that project. Display each section going down the page.
Way 2 (The way I would rather do it)
Have a separate view for each project with the full documentation. Load a specific view based on the project that is loaded in the show function
Comments
Is there some third way in Rails that I am not used to thinking of since I come from using CodeIgniter?
I am completely up for adapting to what the "Rails Way" is, but I am just not sure what the proper convention for this kind of thing is.
Or is this problem a case of, it does not matter how you do it at all?
Thanks in advance.
There are many ways to do this, one of the easiest ways is to override default template.(render :action doesn’t run any code in the target action only template)
This is Way2 in your question. Example:
def show
#project = Project.find(params[:id])
if #project.has_template?
render :action => "show_#{#project.template_name}" and return
end
render :action => "show"
end
In this example directory app/views/projects should have templates for each project
with names like "show.html.erb" for default one and "show_myspecialproject.html.erb" for project with template_name "myspecialproject" , etc....
Template_name is a method that tell you if project has such or should use default, you can put any logic in this method, it can be additional column id table or just template_name can be equal to project name, or it can just check if file exist in current directory.
You can also use partial templates if you want to use show.html.erb because you have code duplications and keep your templates DRY.
http://rails.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Partials.html
This way
controller action is default
def show
#project = Project.find(params[:id])
end
in show.html.erb
<h1><%= #project.name %></h1>
<%= render #project.tamplate_name %>
In this example all partial templates should start with "_" ,
Ex. : "_myspecialproject.html.erb"
If each project has the same general template, I don't know what the value is of having different views.
Here's a suggestion to try on for size.
You can store the documentation, code examples, etc. in a sections table, or each type in it's own table. If you have them in a sections table, include a type field, and use different classes for each type. Let's say Documentation and CodeExample are two such classes.
Define a has_one in your Project class for each type with a :conditions option.
class Project < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :documentation, :conditions => { :type => "Documentation" }
has_one :code_example, :conditions => { :type => "CodeExample" }
end
class Documentation < ActiveRecord::Base
set_table_name "sections"
belongs_to :project
end
If you want to organize your project show page to include the sections, you can call partials for each section type.
If you want your project show page to have a link or tab (you can implement tabs on the page using links or CSS formatted buttons) go to a show action in a controller for the section type. Using nested routes for this might be an idea you want to use.
resources :projects do
resource :documentation
resource :code_example
end
These are some ideas. You might take what you want from my ideas, if you don't want to do it all this way.
For people that only want the question, here it is :
Is there a way to specify the folder to look in when you call render on an object? I don't want to specify the view, only the folder to look in.
And for people that want context :
I am working on an activity stream system (something that looks like google+/facebook).
I have "Activities", which are exactly like google+ feeds (or facebook, or whatever!). So, I have a simple loop that display each activities, which are bound to one of the following object (polymorphic) : User, Group, Comment, Note.
In my view that render an activity (views/activities/_activity.html.erb), I have
<%= render activity.object %>
where activity.object is a reference to the bound object (User, Group, Note, Comment). If it's a user, it goes to views/users/_user.html.erb and renders it. For a group, views/groups/_group.html.erb.
That works just fine. However, I come to the point where the rendering of a group in my activities should not be the same rendering as in the group list page. Is there a way to specify the folder to look in when you call render on an object? So that my :
<%= render activity.object %>
would become :
<%= render activity.object, :folder => 'views/activities/' %>
Note that I don't want to specify which view directly, as I don't want to do a case for each of the possible types of objects (User, Group, Note, Comment) in the activity. I want to to have the same behaviour as of right now, which means if it finds a views/activities/_user.html.erb, it would load any user in the activities with that view instead of the one in the views/users/_user.html.erb.
Thanks
I'm not aware of any folder type option, but when I do this I usually do:
<%= render "activities/#{activity.object.class.name.underscore}" %>
That would give you similar behaviour.
EDIT A good point below by Dominic, if your classes are nested in namespaces, you will have to include the appropriate structure.
i.e.
module Foo
class Bar < ActiveRecord::Base
end
end
# class.name is Foo::Bar, underscored is 'foo/bar'
<%= render "activities/#{activity.object_type.underscore}" %>
# will be in
activities/foo/_bar.html
In current Rails (3.2.9), you can define a to_partial_path method on your model to tell it where to look.
For example, you can do:
class User
def to_partial_path; "user"; end
end
Rails will then look for _user.html.erb relative to the view from which you're calling render.
My own approach, which I extracted in polymorphic_render gem - to add suffixes for special partials, but store that partial in resource folders.
In your case views/users/_user.html.erb will have very common user representation (which probably used in users list rendering), but views/users/_user_activity.html.erb will render special partial for user activity.
And inserting that partials is very simple, just <%= polymorphic_render activity.object, :activity %>
What is your solution to the problem if you have a model that is both not-nested and nested, such as products:
a "Product" can belong_to say an "Event", and a Product can also just be independent.
This means I can have routes like this:
map.resources :products # /products
map.resources :events do |event|
event.resources :products # /events/1/products
end
How do you handle that in your views properly?
Note: this is for an admin panel. I want to be able to have a "Create Event" page, with a side panel for creating tickets (Product), forms, and checking who's rsvp'd. So you'd click on the "Event Tickets" side panel button, and it'd take you to /events/my-new-event/tickets. But there's also a root "Products" tab for the admin panel, which could list tickets and other random products. The 'tickets' and 'products' views look 90% the same, but the tickets will have some info about the event it belongs to.
It seems like I'd have to have views like this:
products/index.haml
products/show.haml
events/products/index.haml
events/products/show.haml
But that doesn't seem DRY. Or I could have conditionals checking to see if the product had an Event (#product.event.nil?), but then the views would be hard to understand.
How do you deal with these situations?
Thanks so much.
I recommend you to make separate admin controller with it's own views to administrate everything you want. And your customer's logic stayed in products contoller.
I don't have good and clean solution for this problem. Usualy if views doesn't differ to much, I use single view and add some code like #product.event.nil?. You can always add some variable, or helper that will make this method shorter, on example has_event? - then your view will look cleaner. And use it in code like this:
<% if has_event? %>
some html
<% end %>
or for single line:
<%= link_to 'Something special', foo_path if has_event? %>
On the other side, you can create few partials that are the same for both views, put them in some folder, on example /shared/products/... and render them from your views like this:
<%= render :partial => '/shared/products/info' %>
and so on.
But if they don't differ too much, I really would use if version.
The views will be handled by the ProductsController. You can alter the logic in your controller depending on the nesting of the resource.
# app/controller/products_controller.rb
# ...some code...
def index
#event = Event.find_by_id(params[:event_id]) if params[:event_id]
#products = #event ? #event.products : Product.all
end
The view will be handled by the usual product view
# app/views/products/index.html.haml
- unless #products.blank?
- #products.each do |product|
%p= product.some_attribute