ResourcefulViews was designed as an extension of MakeResourceful. It has no dependency on MakeResourceful, but by providing things like current_model and current_object, MakeResourceful make it easier to use ResourcefulViews to define clearly abstracted default views.
ResourcefulViews seeks to DRY views by extending the concept of content_for[http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/CaptureHelper.html#M001069] and by enabling the specification of default views.
With ResourcefulViews, you typically want to create a show.html.erb, index.html.erb, edit.html.erb and new.html.erb in a folder called “default” which is in your base view folder. (See the included examples for some possible starting point ‘default’ views)
Call render_resource :show instead of render :action => 'show' and Rails will fallback on the ‘show’ implementation found in the default folder, if one is not found in the controller specific folder. (ResourcefulViews::ActionControllerExtensions)
Follow this convention with all your RESTful controllers and you will have a scaffold-like view implementation available for each RESTful action.
Of course, you need to make sure your ‘default’ view implementations are sufficiently abstract.
For Example: While ‘show’ on the UsersController will probably make reference to @user. The default implementation of ‘show’ will have to be more clever by using something like instance_variable_get("@#{controller_name.singularize}"). In lieu of doing so in your views, it’s helpful to define current_object on your controllers to return this instance variable appropriately. (Something you get for free from MakeResourceful)
The default views concept extends to partials as well via render_resource_partial and get_content_for. If rendering a partial from a controller action, use render_resource_partial to achieve behavior similar to render_resource for partials.
If rendering a partial from within another view, use get_content_for. (ResourcefulViewsHelper.get_content_for)
Example: <%=get_content_for(:form)%>
Will result in a check for partial named “_form” in first the controller specific view folder, and then in the defaults folder. The final source for the rendered content could also have come from a previous call to content_for. ResourcefulViews checks for templates that fulfill content requests in a consistent defined order: controller, theme, default.
Another Example:
Often, we re-use components between our edit, and new views. We can use a partial called _form by defining my default edit and new to each call:
<%=get_content_for('form')%>
I can define _form.html.erb in my controller-specific view folder, and have this be the place where the form logic exists for that model. example:
<% for column in current_model.content_columns %>
<p><%= column.human_name %>: <%= text_field(current_model.to_s.underscore, column.name) %></p>
<% end %>
Sometimes you want to pass an argument to content_for. ResourcefulViewsHelper.content_for_object is a way to do so.
For Example:
<% content_for_object(‘listing_each’) do | user | %> <li>User <%=user.name%> is a <%=user.role%></li> <% end %> and then somewhere else where you can reference that content, you can recall it and use it:
<ul> <% current_objects.each do |object| %> <%=get_content_for_object(‘listing_each’, object)%> <% end %> </ul> And of course, you could also use an actual file called _listing_each.html.erb. Which might look something like this:
<li>User <%=current_object.name%> is a <%=current_object.role%></li>
(Notice that current_object is assigned by ResourcefulViews when it renders this views in the context of a request to get_content_for_object)
(see also: ResourcefulViewsHelper.default_content_for)
ResourcefulViews provides a convention of naming your views as additions instead of overrides. Instead of overriding the default implementation of _form with my own in the users folder, I could create _form_defaults.html.erb which defines:
<% content_for(‘form’) do %> This is some additional content you will see at the top of the form <% end %> _form_defaults is automatically looked for an executed on the call to get_content_for('form'), which means that the content_for blocks defined in _form_defaults setup a means for customizing by addition instead of customizing by replacement.
I haven’t yet figured out how to make _show_defaults execute off of render_resource(:show), it only works for content_for and content_for_object.
The idea of this plugin is to provide flexible views tools to build your own version of Hobo or Streamlined or ActiveScaffold or AutoAdmin in the ‘defaults’ folder, in such a way that you have the ability to override those components of that base view that you need to.
(Of course, we don’t provide a way to define default actions and controllers, but that’s what we think MakeResourceful is for)
Copyright © 2008-2009 3M. All rights reserved. Released under the MIT license.
Authored by Jacob Burkhart.