There are a few options for editing a model in-place while in the Show page, i.e. without having to load a form in the Edit page. For example, see http://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/rails_in_place_editing.html.
Has anyone had any experience using any of these options (or others) in Rails 3? Any pointers or advice?
In my case, I have a fairly long form composed of a variable number of items. From a usability point of view, it makes good sense to edit the text in these items in the same page, instead of needing an Edit button for each one that sends the user to an edit page for the particular item.
Excellent question!
in_place_editing is by dhh, Rails creator. It's maintained by the Rails core team. So it certainly should be looked into.
Hobo is a large framework that features in-place editing front and center. It's a smooth package but may be more than what you want or need.
Updated for Rails 3
Ryan of Railscasts recommends the Best in Place gem. See the Railscast with sample code and more info.
Sure it makes sense to me. I do it all the time.
For example, I am working on a complex polymorophic nested model form and it only has two views. An index, and a partial for dynamically adding more attributes to it.
If you know AJAX, that can really help your UI in that your users will not even have to click a save button.
To accomplish a bare minumum of this. Set up an index.html.erb with your form inside it.
In your controller, you could specify your actions like so :
def update
#quick_fact = #organization.quick_facts.find(params[:id])
if #quick_fact.update_attributes(params[:tab])
flash[:notice] = 'Text Tab was successfully updated.'
redirect_to quick_facts_organization_path(#organization)
else
render :action => "index", :id => params[:id]
end
end
Related
I have a logic question and I cannot figure out how to do it. First of all, I am working on an social networking site, and I completed the site in pure PHP, but now I am re-writing the backend in rails.
My questions is, I generated UsersController, it has new, create, show, edit, update, delete, and destroy.
I thought I could use "new" to display sign up page, "create" to process sign up, "show" to display profile page, "edit" to display account settings and "update" to process edit.
I might have a logic problem here, maybe I should put "new" and "create" in a signup controller. This where I get confused. The problem with the first logic I said, I have 2 layouts, one of them is for before login, and the other one is for after login. (You can imagine Facebook's header before login, and after login).
So, when I have 2 different layout, I cannot use 1 controller in 2 layout. Because sign up page has "before login header design" and account settings and profile has "after login header design". And as you can guess I define layout in controller.
I don't know if I explained well. Thank you.
By default, Rails will look-up a layout with the same name as the controller, or else application.html.erb. But you can also specify one controller-wide (which won't help you, but bear with me)
class SomethingController
layout "some_name"
...
That's still layout-wide, so not what you need.
But you can also specify a specific layout on each call to render in an action:
def edit
#some logic
render "some_template", :layout => "some_layout"
end
Or, to take the default template lookup, but still specify a layout:
def edit
# some logic
render :layout => "some_layout"
end
There's another way you can specify layouts too, which might be especially appropriate for the use case of "one layout if not logged in, another if logged in":
class SomeController
layout :method_name_to_determine_layout
# ... actions ...
protected
def method_name_to_determine_layout
if current_user
"logged_in_layout_name"
else
"not_logged_in_layout_name"
end
end
You can learn more about the different ways to specify layouts in the Layouts and Rendering Rails Guide
Hope this helps.
Rails has basic CRUD default actions. Additionally each action can have different processing depending on the HTTP verb. You can also add custom actions & routes.
It is best to follow standard Rails practices for each default action. For example, "new" action should route to the form to create a new user when accessed via GET. An HTTP POST to the form should route to the "create" action.
If you need to add an additional controller action, do so with a custom method. Again, I stress, simple CRUD actions should follow normal Rails conventions.
Read more about routing
Read this guide many times to understand simple CRUD actions in Rails
Instead of using 1 controller in 2 layouts, I decided to use separate controllers. So, I have profile_controller, which has "edit" and "update" for account settings and "show" to display profile. And I also users_controller, which has followings: login, login_attempt, signup, signup_attempt, etc..
So, I am not putting signup and edit together in 1 controller, instead using 2 different controllers is much better and clean, I guess.
Sounds like you're trying to roll your own authentication.
I'd recommend using Devise... great tutorial here:
The reason for this is two-fold.
Firstly, Devise gives you the ability to split your app between authenticated and non-authenticated users. Namely, it provides the user_signed_in?, devise_controller? and current_user helpers to aid with this.
This might not appear like a big deal, but it will actually help you with your layouts (I'll describe more in a second).
Secondly, Devise is pre-rolled. Your questions about how to handle signups and registrations have already been solved. Of course, there's nothing preventing you from making your own authentication (Devise is just built on Warden after all), but it should give you some ideas on how this has been done already.
In regards your original question (about layouts), the other answer is very good (in terms of setting layouts per method etc).
To add to it, I would say that you have to remember that Rails is a series of classes. As such, setting the layout option in the controller is the best way to ensure you're getting the correct one.
Here's Rails explanation on it:
#app/controllers/application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
layout :your_layout
private
def your_layout
devise_controller? || !user_signed_in? ? "new_user" : "application"
end
end
I've found it better to keep your logic as terse as possible. IE only have one set of logic for the layout. We tend to keep it in the ApplicationController, overriding where necessary.
--
Finally, your questions also highlighted a base misunderstanding of Rails. I'm not being disrespectful; I've found the clearer your perception of the framework, the better you can work with it:
You have to remember several key points with Rails:
It's an MVC (Model View Controller) framework
It's built on Ruby; hence is object orientated
maybe I should put "new" and "create" in a signup controller. This where I get confused.
If you take Devise as a model, you'll see that you could treat your controllers as layers of abstraction for objects. That is, as Devise shows us, you can have sessions and registrations controllers.
I'm not advocating you do this exactly, I am trying to show that if you put the focus onto the objects you're working with, it becomes clearer where your controller actions should be placed.
You'll also be best understanding the CRUD (Create Read Update Destroy) nature of Rails controllers & objects. The standard Rails controller is set up as such:
Whilst this is not strict, it does give you another indication as to the structure your controllers should adhere to.
You may know this stuff already!
My knowledge of Rails is pretty basic, but I have to fix a problem in a Rails project and the programmer can not be reached. So I'm trying to fix it myself, but I'm stuck.
The project revolves around user being able to add pictures to competitions, and to be able to vote on those pictures. The plan was to have to voting on the same page as the images, but this gives a few bugs in the JS and slow performance. So I want to have the voting and the overview on two different pages.
The problem is that I can't figure out how to create another page inside the views > competitions folder and link it up with the rest of the project. The easiest solution for me would be to copy the show.html.haml and paste it like votepage.html.haml but obviously that isn't so easy.
in the view > competitions folder there's an index.html.haml file, this displays a list of current competitions and gives a admin the ability to remove, add or edit certain competitions. When a user clicks on a link to a competition this gets rendered in the show.html.haml. On this page all the images that have been uploaded in that competition are shown. On that page I want a link that refers to the voting section. When a user clicks that link it should go to the votepage.html.haml (which is 100% the same as the show.html.haml but with different styling and added javascript). For now there's no need to actually make the voting work, "faking" it through front-end is good enough.
TLDR: I want to copy/paste a page in a view, but I don't know how to hook it up to the project.
Update1. I've used the console command rails generate controller competitions votepage which created a votepage for me. I could visit this one as well on http://localhost:3000/competitions/votepage
With the following code
- #competitions.each do |competition|
#container.js-masonry
.painting.item
= link_to competition do
- competition.pictures.shuffle.each do |picture|
= image_tag(picture.image_url)
I can insert images from the competitions in the page. But the problem is that I gets images from all competitions. And not so much competitions/1 , competitions/2 etc.
What you're missing is updating the routes file so that Rails knows what you want
Views:
competitions/
show.html.haml
vote.html.haml
...
Routes:
resources :competitions do
get :vote, on: :member
end
Member makes it behave like the show action, requiring a format like competitions/:id/vote
Edit:
You want to do the routes like above, but in the controller, make sure you get the competition from the id that will get passed
Controller:
def vote
#competition = Competition.find(params[:id])
end
And then instead of looping through all the competitions, you can just take the loop out and reference #competition
The basic answer is that you also need to copy the show method from app/controllers/competitions and make a votepage method with the contents in the same file.
This guide will help explain how views get wired (by the controller) to models: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_controller_overview.html
I've been watching and reproducing these railscasts on my app: 196-nested-model-form-part-1 and 197-nested-model-form-part-2. I do not yet have a pro account so i can't watch the revised episode.
I'm developing under rails4 (edge) and link_to_function has been deprecated in favor of unobstrusive JS (which is great).
I'll keep the example of the above railscasts (i.e. survey/question).
What i'd like to do is to use the question's partial through unobstrusive javascript and i just don't know how and where i should do this.
I was thinking of two ways to do so :
First way would be to add in my app/assets/javascripts a file surveys.js with the function add_question but i don't see how i could use my partial from here.
Other way would be to create a new action in my SurveyController that would respond using the question partial but i'm bothered by the fact of having an action specific to questions in my survey controller.
I can't help to think there must be a better way to do this.
Did you know about remote links and forms? You can use a remote link here to accomplish what you want.
In your view:
link_to 'Add question', add_question_path(#survey), remote: true
In your controller
def add_question
#survey = Survey.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
format.js #add_question.js.erb
end
end
The last step is to create a file app/views/surveys/add_question.js.erb
$('#my_survey').append('<%=j render partial: 'my_question_partial' %>')
Don't forget to create a route for your ask_question_path
For more info about remote links and forms see: http://tech.thereq.com/post/17243732577/rails-3-using-link-to-remote-true-with-jquery-ujs
I don't have a pro account on Railscasts either, but sometimes it is a good idea to have a look at Ryan's Github account. Oftentimes he develops gems to stuff he covered in his episodes. There you will find this awesome nested_form gem, which does exactly what you want.
Of course you can reinvent the wheel, but I think it is much easier and faster to use Ryan's gem. The documentation explains perfectly how to use it. Have fun!
I've been stuck on this for about 2 weeks. I need help in the proper way to do this. I have two models. Model one is Leads. Model two is Referrals.
Leads belongs_to referrals
Referrals has_many Leads
In the Lead entry screen there is a partial that displays possible Referrals for the lead to select from. There is an Add Referral link in the partial that brings up a modal using twitter bootstrap as the css framework. From that I am rendering the New action of the Referral controller.
This all works up to this point. What I want to have happen is that I can then enter a new referral, it is saved, the modal closes, and the list of referrals in the partial of the Leads edit/new view is then updated to reflect the new referral that has been added. But at this point I now have nested form_for's. As well as a Referral form that is working off a different controller.
I am not sure how I should approach this. I have been searching and trying various methods for a couple of weeks now. Do I repeat myself and completely rebuild the Referral view and controller under the Leads controller and view? Repetitive code like that is why I switched to rails, and why I feel I'm not looking at this correctly. There has to be a simple way around this. I have looked at using Gems like Draper and Cell, and I've read up on using presenters. But those seem to all be solutions for a dashboard type of view, not what I am trying to accomplish.
Any help or direction would be much appreciated.
Thank you...
This is the way i program this kind of problem.
It works for me, maybe you can adapt to your own situation.
Well, you create action on yout Referral Controller should respond with javascript.
if #referral.save
format.js
This way, you will have a create.js.erb file whitin the views folder where you keep your referral's views.
In the create.js.erb you may have something similar to this:
$('#modal_id').hide(); // Hide the modal or if you prefer, remove from DOM.
$('#referral_list_id').chidren().delete(); // Remove the list of referrals.
$('#referral_list_id').html(
"<%= escape_javascript(render('referrals_list')) %>"
); // Render a partial with the new content from your controller.
Your form for a new referral inside your modal, should be remote too:
<%= form_for #referral, :remote => true do %>
Maybe you will run into some gotchas while implementing this way, but i believe it is kinda easy to solve.
In my current project I have a couple instances where I have a re-usable form that exists inside a rails partial. This form submits to a specific controller via ajax (:remote => true). The controller does some stuff and then returns back the appropriate js.erb to modify the page via javascript.
This works fine for when I have a single view. But the problem seems to happen when this re-usable partial exists on multiple views. In view 1 I might want to issue a completely different set of javascript commands then in view 2.
As a concrete example, say I have a comments controller that has the normal CRUD operations.
I now have partial called _comments_box.erb. This _comments_box.erb contains the ability to submit a comment via a simple line:
- form_for comment, :url => post_comments_path(post), :remote => true do |f|
This submits to a comments_controller.rb create method which looks somethings like this:
def create
... do some stuff, like create a new comments model
respond_to do |format|
# will respond with create.js.erb
format.js
end
end
The create.js.erb in turn adds a comment to the view, perhaps doing a bunch of other updates to the DOM.
Say I render the _comments_box.erb within a view called post_summary.erb. Now I have another view, post_detail.erb that requires the same _comments_box.erb. However the post_detail.erb requires me to update completely different divs on the DOM in response to a new comment.
I need to create a different JS response for each instantiation. So I can either:
Create an alternate controller method, say create_2. Pass in some parameter to the _comments_box.erb from post_detail.erb to the _comments_box.erb partial so it knows which controller method to fire. This will allow me to have a separate file _create_2.js.erb that will allow me to manipulate the post_detail.erb view independently.
Forget about using js.erb altogether and just use plain old AJAX and get back JSON, and handle the javascript manipulation completely on the client-side.
It seems option 1 allows me to continue to use the UJS supported by Rails which is nice. But also means I probably will be adding a lot of duplicate code everywhere which is annoying. Is there a way for me to do this elegantly while continuing to use UJS?
That's exactly the purpose of Apotomo: http://apotomo.de/
Here is it's own description:
Apotomo is a true MVC widget framework
for Rails. Widgets are based on Cells
and provide reuseable view components.
Having bubbling events, they know when
and how to update themselves via AJAX!
Working with Apotomo widgets almost
feels like developing GUI components –
in a Rails environment.
Have a try, it's great.
I'd not recommend using UJS for frontend apps: server shouldn't take care of client side business. I agree it's useful and clean but it lacks performance and thus should be kept for backend stuff (RJS will move into a gem, see here: http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/4/21/jquery-new-default).
That said, back to the solutions you expose:
1) I think you won't need an extra controller, you'd just have to pass additional params in order to know from where to query came from. A hidden_field could do the trick. With this info, render the good js.erb file
format.js { if condition
render "create.js.erb"
else
render "create_2.js.erb"
end
}
2) I'd go for it and return json but you'll face the same problem: knowing from where the request comes from.
A better solution (than using a hidden_field) might be to check the request.referer in your controller action. This way you leverage the fact that each context has a unique URL, and don't have to explicitly specify another unique value when rendering your widget partial.