How to do user content from CMS in Rails - ruby-on-rails

I'm trying to build a CMS in Rails from scratch, and for showing the user generated pages I'm having trouble deciding exactly how to do it.
The way I have it right now, I have a controller named 'content' with a single action called 'show'. In routes.rb I have a rule that passes any name after the name of the website to the content controller, show action with parameter name.
For example, www.mysite.com/about_us would route to
:controller => 'content', :action => 'show', :page => 'about_us'
Inside the content controller, I do a find on the Pages model to locate the named page:
#markup = Page.find_by_name(params[:page])
And then in the show.html.erb view I use the raw helper to display the content:
<%= raw #markup.text %>
Does this method violate anything about the way I should do be doing things in Rails? Or is this an OK solution?

I ended up using the sanitize helper, by default it removes <script> tags which is essentially what you need to prevent XSS, as far as I understand. For those who have found this via a search, the only code that changes from what I described above is that in the view you change to:
<%= sanitize #markup.text %>

Related

Pass data safely from view to controller in rails

I want to pass data from a view (link) to a controller so it can look up the related information. Services for a company, in this case.
I see examples where people have added to params like this:
<div>
<%= link_to 'Services', :controller => 'company', :action => 'services', :company_id => #company.id %>
</div>
...but that results in a transparent (unsafe) URL like this:
http://localhost:5000/company/services?company_id=17
Is there a way to get around this without stuffing data into the Session? What's the best practice on links inside an app that requires authentication?
THere is no such major harm in passing data like this in View.
Still if you insist on having, then check prettyurls:
http://railscasts.com/episodes/314-pretty-urls-with-friendlyid
Prior to we must have valid checks in controller & model files.
1. Valid Checks and redirection in Controller is helpful.
2. Depending on need adding validations in model can be a good support.
<%= link_to "Sign in", new_session_path(:id => Base64.encode64("1")) %>
and in your controller
def new
id=Base64.decode64(params[:id].to_s)
end
this is another form for create a link with data
check your routes with command un console rake routes
for more information read this documention
http://apidock.com/rails/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHelper/link_to

Formatting a form using rails app

How can i format a form on a rails app?
I have my application.css file, no classes where gives or ids to the form tags inside of the form action page. but the form inherited the formatting in somehow but it is not what i wanted.
Also, how can i make every single page in my rails app have its own page and css file?
i don't want to make one master page and imbed the pages codes inside the body tag
like i want to have every single page its own application.html.erb and how to let rails know about this and not to load the default one?
I'm a php guy, so working with styling and templates very confusing to me.
when i want to format a form using css. i know how to do it, also i write the code like below:
<form id="FirstForm">
in my rails app tutorial i followed, there is no id tages or formatting inside the form tags and fields at all. don't know how this got formatted? is it allowed to write ids and classes inside of the rails form tag?
You can pass id and class as you desire.
Example:
<%= form_for #article, :url => { :action => "create" }, :html => {:id => "FirstForm", :class => "your_class"} do |f| %>
Check full doc.

Rails: What does it actually mean to "render a template"

I've become a bit confused about the idea of "rendering" a "template" due to the way an author speaks about it in a book I'm reading.
My original understanding of "rendering a template" was that it meant that Rails is providing the content that is viewed on the screen/presented to the viewer (in the way that a partial is rendered) but the book I'm reading seems to be using the concept of "rendering a template" to also mean something else. Let me explain in context
This book (rails 3 in action) sets up a page layout using the conventional layouts/application.html.erb file, and then it "yields" to different view pages, such as views/tickets/show.html.erb which adds more content to the screen. that's all straightforward..
Within this view views/tickets/show.html.erb, there is a rendering of a partial (which is also a straightforward concept).
<div id='tags'><%= render #ticket.tags %></div>
Now within this partial there is, using ajax, a call to a "remove" method in the "tags_controller.rb" which is designed to allow authorized users to remove a "tag" from a "ticket" in our mock project management application.
<% if can?(:tag, #ticket.project) || current_user.admin? %>
<%= link_to "x", remove_ticket_tag_path(#ticket, tag),
:remote => true,
:method => :delete,
:html => { :id => "delete-#{tag.name.parameterize}" } %>
<% end %>
Now here is the "remove" action in the tags controller (which disassociates the tag from the ticket in the database)...
def remove
#ticket = Ticket.find(params[:ticket_id])
if can?(:tag, #ticket.project) || current_user.admin?
#tag = Tag.find(params[:id])
#ticket.tags -= [#tag]
#ticket.save
end
end
end
At the end of this remove action, the author originally included render :nothing => true , but then he revised the action because, as he says, "you’re going to get it to render a template." Here's where I get confused
The template that he gets this action to render is "remove.js.erb", which only has one line of jquery inside it, whose purpose is to remove the "tag" from the page (i.e. the tag that the user sees on the screen) now that it has been disassociated from the ticket in the database.
$('#tag-<%= #tag.name.parameterize %>').remove();
When I read "rendering a template" I expect the application to be inserting content into the page, but the template rendered by the "remove" action in the controller only calls a jquery function that removes one element from the page.
If a "template" is "rendered", I'm expecting another template to be removed (in order to make room for the new template), or I'm expecting content to be "rendered" in the way that a partial is rendered. Can you clarify what is actually happening when a "template" is "rendered" in the situation with the jquery in this question? Is it actually putting a new page in front of the user (I expected some sort of physical page to be rendered)
You're nearly there! Rendering a template is indeed always about producing content, but for a slightly wider description of content. It could be a chunk of html, for example an ajax call to get new items might produce some html describing the new items, but it doesn't have to be.
A template might produce javascript as it does in your second example. Personally I am trying to avoid this and instead pass JSON back to the client and let the client side js perform the required work.
Another type of rendering you might perform is to produce some JSON. APIs will often do this, but you might also do this on a normal page. For example rather than rendering some javascript to delete tag x you might render the json
{ to_delete: "tag-123"}
and then have your jQuery success callback use that payload to know which element to remove from the DOM, by having this in your application.js file
$('a.delete_tag').live('ajax:success', function(data){
var selector = '#' + data.to_delete;
$(selector).remove()
}
(Assuming that your delete links had the class 'delete_tag')
Rendering JSON like this isn't really a template at all, since you'd usually do this via
render :json => {:to_delete => "tag-#{#tag.name.parameterize}"}
although I suppose you could use an erb template for this (I can't imagine why though).
My understanding is that js.erb is "rendered" by executing the javascript functions within it. Very often something like the below is done:
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
jQuery('#element').html('<%= escape_javascript(render pages/content) %>');
});
There's a really succinct overview of rendering at http://guides.rubyonrails.org/layouts_and_rendering.html that may help as it also goes into the details of the ActionController::Base#render method and what happens behind the scenes when you use render :nothing (for example). Render but can be used for files or inline code as well -- not just 'templates' in the traditional sense.

Ruby on Rails: form and radio button question

I have a form around a list of items. I would like to check a radio button on the list and then, after clicking 'Submit', go to the 'Edit' page of the selected item.
The problem is that if I am writing something like
<%= form_tag edit_item_path %>
but Rails complains that I didn't provided a proper id, which in turn is being set on my radio buttons as the following:
<%= radio_button 'item', 'id', item.id %>
So - how would I send a form with a selected id to a given action?
Doing it the way you describe would not work, since edit_item_path by default RESTful path definitions is a GET request. You are trying to make it a POST request. If you would like to stick to the RESTful way of doing things I would recommend simply looping through your items and provide links to edit, since you are planning to edit them one at a time anyways. Otherwise, you would have to define a new route if you would prefer doing things within the form with radio buttons. If you are, than you would add something like this to your config/routes.rb: (assuming you are using rails 2.3.x)
map.resources :items, :member =>{:edit_radio_form => :post}
Than your form would look like this:
<%= form_tag edit_radio_form_item_path do |form| %>
And it should work, but it not the right way of doing things for several reasons, the most anoying one of which is that you won't get a full URL on your edit page because you got there with a POST request, so if you refresh the page, your item id param will be gone and will produce an error.

Ruby on Rails passing of parameters between views from link_to tag instead of submit_tags (having both on page)

I'm creating in my index page of my ruby on rails program, a list of the most commonly searched for terms in my database and hence each time a user selects a specific category this is written to another database.
What i would like it to create a hyperlink and pass a certain amount of parameters to a form like is usually done with a select_tag but instead with just a hyperlink, i would like to pass a set of hidden fields that i have on the page as well as what the user has selected.
To give you a better idea, basically i have the following structure in my program:
User inputs a search on (index.html.erb), user clicks on submit tag
action, user is taken to search.html.erb page and is displayed a set of refined categories + some fields, submit button,
user is taken to closest.html.erb (which uses parameters from the previous form by invoking the params[:searchSelected] and a few other params. )
I would also like to add this functionality:
Mimick this same operation, but instead of going in the search.html.erb, i would click on an already refined search category on the index.html.erb page (from a link_to , transmit as parameters which link_to the user has chosen + the hidden fields.
i Currently have this code
#stats.each do
|scr|%>
<%= link_to scr.category, :action => 'closest', :id => scr.category%>
I'm not sure if this is relevant, but i currently have the following routes in my routes.rb file
map.resources :stores, :collection => { :search => :get }
map.connect ':controller/:action/:id'
map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format'
would anyone please assist me please? this is my first ruby on rails project and i would really like to find a way around this please
I am not sure if this is what you were thinking, but you can add additional parameters to the link_to tag. They are then available in your controller. So:
<%= link_to scr.category, :action => 'closest', :id => scr.category, :other_param => "test" %>
Will be available in your controller.
def closest
params[:other_param] == "test" #this will be true
end
i managed to resolve this by taking the params[:id] and then according to the value either set my own values (instead of the hidden ones in the index.erb which i had set manually anyway) and otherwise, continue as usual had i placed a regular search
View:
<%= link_to obj.ptc_devicename ,"/wiuconfig/hd?idval=#{obj.id.to_s}&val=#{#devicetype}",:value => obj.ptc_devicename,:id =>obj.id %><br/>
Controller:
#Heading= params[:val]
#id=params[:id]
value will be id is 2 and val is #devicetype

Resources