Formie

Tired of programming each HTML tag? Are you in search of DRYness for Rails views? May be Formie can help you.

Formie implements low level template-based helpers. It injects the formies into the ActionView module. The form-bounded as well as the unbounded templates are supported. Still, the ActionView functionality (e.g. text_field) is kept untouched. In short, Formie is like a helper using the notation of a partial.

Templates handlers are supported as in partials.

Installation

As usual:

$ [sudo] gem install formie

or:

# Gemfile
gem 'formie'

$ bundle

Use 'gem install formie -v 0.7.1' for Rails 3.2.

Description

Templates for Formie are hosted in:

app/formies/forms (bounded to form)
app/formies/application (free standing)
app/formies/templates (free standing)

Inside a formie the following locals (as delivered by the controller) are available:

Name	Description
action_name
args	remainings after extracting options/locals
block	block passed to the formie
controller_name
form	(available inside form_for (similar to fields_for))
form.object
params

Locals are passed in a hash. The controller attributes are available as usual.

To avoid a server restart during development of formies you may add to:

# app/controllers/application_controller.rb

before_filter do
  Formie.reload  if 'development' == Rails.env
end

Examples

<%= copyright %>
<%= back %>
<%= show obj: @order %>

<%= form_for @order do |f| %>
  <%= f.l_text_field :who %>
  <%= f.l_text_field :amount %>
<% end %>

In directory app/formies :

# application/copyright.html.erb
<div class="copyright"> Copyright (c) 2009 </div>

# application/back.html.erb
<a href="<%= "/#{h(controller_name)}" %>"> Back </a>

# application/show.html.erb
<a href="<%= "/#{h(controller_name)}/#{obj.id}" %>"> Show </a>

# forms/l_text_field.html.erb
<% field = args.first %>
<p>
  <%= form.label field %><br />
  <%= form.text_field field %>
</p>