Overview

Enhances Rails with a DSL for menu navigation.

Features

Provides a simple DSL for building navigation menus.
Supports auto-detection/highlighting of active menu items based on current path (customizable for non-path usage too).
Supports sub-menus, nested tags, HTML attributes, etc.
Supports the following HTML tags: nav, section, h1-h6, ul, li, a, b, em, s, small, span, strong, sub, and sup.
Provides an "item" convenience method which combines the "li" and "a" HTML tags into a single method for less typing.

Requirements

Any of the following Ruby VMs:
- MRI 2.x.x
- JRuby 1.x.x
Ruby on Rails 4.1.x.

Setup

For a secure install, type the following from the command line (recommended):

gem cert --add <(curl -Ls https://www.alchemists.io/gem-public.pem)
gem install navigator --trust-policy MediumSecurity

NOTE: A HighSecurity trust policy would be best but MediumSecurity enables signed gem verification while allowing the installation of unsigned dependencies since they are beyond the scope of this gem.

For an insecure install, type the following (not recommended):

gem install navigator

Add the following to your Gemfile:

gem "navigator"

Usage

The following are examples using the navigation view helper:

Unordered List (simple)

Code:

navigation do
  item "Dashboard", "/dashboard"
  item "News", "/posts"
end

Result:

<ul>
  <li><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
  <li><a href="/posts">Posts</a></li>
</ul>

Unordered List (with attributes)

Code:

navigation "ul", attributes: {class: "nav"} do
  item "Dashboard", "/dashboard", item_attributes: {class: "active"}
  item "News", "/posts"
end

Result:

<ul class="nav">
  <li class="active"><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
  <li><a href="/posts">Posts</a></li>
</ul>

Unordered List (with multiple data attributes)

Code:

navigation do
  item "Home", "/home", item_attributes: {data: {id: 1, type: "public"}}
end

Result:

<ul>
  <li data-id="1" data-type="public"><a href="/home">Home</a></li>
</ul>

TIP: Nested data-- attributes can be applied to any menu item in the same manner as Rails view helpers.

Nav (with links)

Code:

navigation "nav" do
  a "Dashboard", attributes: {href: "/dashboard"}
  a "News", attributes: {href: "/posts"}
end

Result:

<nav>
  <a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a>
  <a href="/posts">Posts</a>
</nav>

Code:

navigation "nav", attributes: {class: "top-bar", "data-topbar" => nil} do
  ul attributes: {class: "title-area"} do
    li attributes: {class: "name"} do
      h1 do
        a "Demo", attributes: {href: "/home"}
      end
    end
  end

  section attributes: {class: "top-bar-section"} do
    ul attributes: {class: "left"} do
      item "Home", "/"
      item "About", "/about"
    end

    ul attributes: {class: "right"} do
      item "v1.0.0", '#'
    end

    ul attributes: {class: "right"} do
      item "Login", "/login", link_attributes: {class: "button tiny round"}
    end
  end
end

Result:

<nav class="top-bar" data-topbar="">
  <ul class="title-area">
    <li class="name">
      <h1><a href="/" class="active">Demo</a></h1>
    </li>
  </ul>

  <section class="top-bar-section">
    <ul class="left">
      <li class="active"><a href="/">Home</a></li>
      <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
    </ul>

    <ul class="right">
      <li><a href="#">v1.0.0</a></li>
    </ul>

    <ul class="right">
      <li><a class="button tiny round" href="/login">Login</a></li>
    </ul>
  </section>
</nav>

Code:

navigation "nav" do
  item "Dashboard", admin_dashboard_path
  li attributes: {class: "dropdown"} do
    a "Manage", attributes: {href: "#", class: "dropdown-toggle", "data-toggle" => "dropdown"} do
      b attributes: {class: "caret"}
    end
    ul attributes: {class: "dropdown-menu"} do
      item "Dashboard", admin_dashboard_path
      item "Users", admin_users_path
    end
  end
end

Result:

<ul class="nav">
  <li><a href="/admin/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
  <li class="dropdown">
    <a data-toggle="dropdown" class="dropdown-toggle" href="#">
      Manage
      <b class="caret"></b>
    </a>
    <ul class="dropdown-menu">
      <li><a href="/admin/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
      <li><a href="/admin/users">Users</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

Customization

The navigation view helper can accept an optional Navigator::TagActivator instance. Example:

# Code
activator = Navigator::TagActivator.new search_value: request.env["PATH_INFO"]
navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  a "Home", attributes: {href: home_path}
  a "About", attributes: {href: about_path}
end

<!-- Result -->
<nav>
  <a href="/home" class="active">Home</a>
  <a href="/about" class="active">About</a>
</nav>

This is the default behavior for all navigation menus and is how menu items automaticaly get the "active" class when the item URL (in this case "/home") matches the request.env[“PATH_INFO"] to indicate current page/active tab.

Navigator::TagActivator instances can be configured as follows:

search_key = Optional. The HTML tag attribute to search for. Default: :href.
search_value = Required. The value to match against the search_key value in order to update the value of the target_key. Default: nil.
target_key = Optional. The HTML tag attribute key value to update when the search_value and search_key value match. Default: :class.
target_value = Optional. The value to be applied to the target_key value. If no value exists, then the value is added. Otherwise, if a value exists then the value is appended to the existing value. Default: "active".

This customization allows for more sophisticated detection/updating of active HTML tags. For example, the example code (above) could be rewritten to use data-* attributes and customized styles as follows:

# Code
activator = Navigator::TagActivator.new search_key: "data-id",
                                        search_value: "123",
                                        target_key: "data-style"
                                        target_value: "current"

navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  a "Home", attributes: {href: home_path, "data-id" => "123", data-style="info"}
  a "About", attributes: {href: about_path, "data-id" => "789"}
end

<!-- Result -->
<nav>
  <a href="/home" data-id="123" data-style="info current">Home</a>
  <a href="/about" data-id="789">About</a>
</nav>

Tests

To test, run:

bundle exec rspec spec

To test the dummy application, run:

cd spec/dummy
bin/rails server

Versioning

Read Semantic Versioning for details. Briefly, it means:

Patch (x.y.Z) - Incremented for small, backwards compatible bug fixes.
Minor (x.Y.z) - Incremented for new, backwards compatible public API enhancements and/or bug fixes.
Major (X.y.z) - Incremented for any backwards incompatible public API changes.

Contributions

Read CONTRIBUTING for details.

Credits

Developed by Brooke Kuhlmann at Alchemists

License

History

Read the CHANGELOG for details. Built with Gemsmith.

Overview

Features

Requirements

Setup

Usage

Unordered List (simple)

Unordered List (with attributes)

Unordered List (with multiple data attributes)

Nav (with links)

Foundation Menu

Bootstrap Dropdown

Customization

Tests

Versioning

Contributions

Credits

License

History