Gon-sinatra gem — get your Sinatra variables in your js

If you need to send some data to your js files and you don't want to do this with long way through views and parsing - use this force!

Now with Rabl support!

Usage

views/application.erb

<head>
  <title>some title</title>
  <%= include_gon %>
  <!-- include your action js code -->
  ...

To camelize your variables in js you can use:

<head>
  <title>some title</title>
  <%= include_gon(:camel_case => true) %>
  <!-- include your action js code with camelized variables -->
  ...

You can change the namespace of the variables:

<head>
  <title>some title</title>
  <%= include_gon(:namespace => 'serverExports') %>
  <!-- include your action js code with 'serverExports' namespace -->
  ...

You put something like this in the Sinatra action:

@your_int = 123
@your_array = [1,2]
@your_hash = {'a' => 1, 'b' => 2}
gon.your_int = @your_int
gon.your_other_int = 345 + gon.your_int
gon.your_array = @your_array
gon.your_array << gon.your_int
gon.your_hash = @your_hash

gon.all_variables # > {:your_int => 123, :your_other_int => 468, :your_array => [1, 2, 123], :your_hash => {'a' => 1, 'b' => 2}}
gon.your_array # > [1, 2, 123]

gon.clear # gon.all_variables now is {}

Access the varaibles from your JavaScript file:

alert(gon.your_int)
alert(gon.your_other_int)
alert(gon.your_array)
alert(gon.your_hash)

With camelize:

alert(gon.yourInt)
alert(gon.yourOtherInt)
alert(gon.yourArray)
alert(gon.yourHash)

With custom namespace and camelize:

alert(customNamespace.yourInt)
alert(customNamespace.yourOtherInt)
alert(customNamespace.yourArray)
alert(customNamespace.yourHash)

Usage with Rabl

Now you can write your variables assign logic to templates with Rabl. The way of writing Rabl templates is very clearly described in their repo.

Profit of using Rabl with gon:

  1. You can clean your controllers now!
  2. Work with database objects and collections clearly and easyly
  3. All power of Rabl
  4. You can still be lazy and don't use common way to transfer data in js
  5. And so on

For using gon with Rabl you need to create new Rabl template and map gon to it. For example you have model Post with attributes :title and :body. You want to get all your posts in your js as an Array. That's what you need to do:

  1. Create Rabl template. I prefer creating special directory for templates which are not view templates.

    goners/posts/index.rabl

    collection @posts => 'posts'
    attributes :id, :title, :body
    
  2. All you need to do after that is only to map this template to gon.

    get '/' do
      # some logic
      @posts = [some_objects] # Rabl works with instance variables of controller
    
      gon.rabl 'goners/posts/index.rabl'
      # some logic
    end
    

    Thats it! Now you will get in your js gon.posts variable which is Array of post objects with attributes :id, :title and :body.

In javascript file for view of this action write call to your variable:

alert(gon.posts)
alert(gon.posts[0])
alert(gon.posts[0].post.body)

P.s. If you didn't put include_gon tag in your html head area - it wouldn't work. You can read about this in common usage above.

Some tips of usage Rabl with gon:

If you don't use alias in Rabl template:

collection @posts
....

instead of using that:

collection @posts => 'alias'
....

Rabl will return you an array and gon by default will put it to variable gon.rabl

Two ways how you can change it - using aliases or you can add alias to gon mapping method:

# your logic stuff here

gon.rabl 'path/to/rabl/file', :as => 'alias'

Installation

Manually install gon-sinatra gem: $ gem install gon-sinatra

Add requirement to your app file

require 'gon-sinatra'

Contributors

  • @gazay

Special thanks to @brainopia, @kossnocorp and @ai.

License

The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2011 gazay

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.