FinePrint

FinePrint is a Rails gem (engine) that makes managing web site agreements (terms, privacy policy, etc) simple and easy.

As the meaning of 'agreement' can be somewhat ambiguous (meaning either the thing someone agrees to or the record of the agreement between that thing and the user), we call a set of terms a 'contract' and a user's agreement to that contract a 'signature'.

A version history of all contracts is maintained. Once a particular version of a contract is published, it becomes available for users to sign. Once a version has been signed, it cannot be changed (to effect a change, a new version must be created and published). When a new version of a contract is created and published, users visiting pages requiring signature of that contract will be redirected to a page you specify where they can sign the new contract.

FinePrint provides views for admins to manage contracts and signatures, but does not provide views for the application to display contracts to end users, as that functionality is specific to each particular application. FinePrint does provide convenience methods for finding unsigned contracts and for recording when a user signs a contract.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'fine_print'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself:

$ gem install fine_print

Then execute the following command to copy the necessary migration and the initializer to your application:

$ rake fine_print:install

And then migrate your database:

$ rake db:migrate

Also add FinePrint to your application's routes:

mount FinePrint::Engine => "/fine_print"

And provide a link on your site for administrators to access the FinePrint engine to manage contracts.

<%= link_to 'FinePrint', fine_print_path %>

Configuration

After installation, the initializer for FinePrint will be located under config/initializers/fine_print.rb. Make sure to configure it to suit your needs. Pay particular attention to user_admin_proc, as you will be unable to manage your contracts unless you set up this proc to return true for your admins.

Usage

The FinePrint module contains several methods that help you find contracts and mark them as signed:

get_contract(contract_object_or_id_or_name) sign_contract(user, contract_object_or_id_or_name) signed_contract?(user, contract_object_or_id_or_name) signed_any_contract_version?(user, contract_object_or_id_or_name) get_unsigned_contract_names(user, contract_names...)

Additionally, FinePrint adds 2 class methods to all of your controllers:

fine_print_get_signatures(contract_names..., options_hash) fine_print_skip_signatures(contract_names..., options_hash)

And 1 instance method, also to all of your controllers:

fine_print_return

To require that your users sign the most recent version of a contract, call fine_print_get_signatures in your controllers, just as you would a before_filter (in fact, this method works by adding a before_filter for you).

This method takes a list of contract names (given either as strings or as symbols), along with an options hash.

The options hash can include any options you could pass to a before_filter, e.g. only and except, plus the FinePrint-specific option pose_contracts_path, which can override the value specified in the FinePrint initializer.

Example:

class MyController < ApplicationController
  fine_print_get_signatures :terms_of_use, :privacy_policy,
                            :except => :index

You should only try to get signatures when you have a user who is logged in (FinePrint will allow non-logged in users to pass right through without signing anything). This normally means that before the call to fine_print_get_signatures you should call whatever before_filter gets a user to login.

Just like how rails provides a skip_before_filter method to offset before_filter calls, FinePrint provides a fine_print_skip_signatures method. This method takes the same arguments as before_filter, and can be called either before or after fine_print_get_signatures.

One way you may want to use these methods is to require signatures in every controller by default, and then to skip them in certain situations, e.g.:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  fine_print_get_signatures :terms_of_use

class NoSigsRequiredController < ApplicationController
  fine_print_skip_signatures :terms_of_use

When a set of contracts is found by FinePrint to be required but unsigned, FinePrint redirects the user to the path specified by the pose_contracts_path configuration variable, with the names of the unsigned contracts passed along in a terms array in the URL parameters.

Your job as the site developer is to present the terms to the user and ask them to sign them. This normally involves the user clicking an "I have read the above terms" checkbox which enables an "I Agree" button. When the "Agree" button is clicked (and you should verify that the checkbox is actually clicked in the params passed to the server), you need to send the information off to a controller method that can call FinePrint.sign_contract which takes a user and a contract name, ID, or object. On success, this controller method can send the user back to where they were trying to go by calling the fine_print_return controller method (only works for GET requests).

If there are multiple unsigned contracts, you are not required to get the user to sign them all in one page. One strategy is to present only the first unsigned contract to them for signature. Once they sign it, they'll be redirected to where they were trying to go and FinePrint will see again that they still have remaining unsigned contracts, and FinePrint will direct them back to your pose_contracts_path with one fewer contract name passed in.

Managing Contracts

Here are some important notes about managing your contracts with FinePrint:

  • Contracts have a name and a title; the former is used by your code, the latter is intended for display to end users.
  • Creating another contract with the same name as an existing contract will make it a new version of that existing contract.
  • Contracts need to be explicitly published to be available to users to sign (this can be done on the contracts admin page).
  • The latest published version is what users will see.
  • A contract cannot be modified after at least one user has signed it, but you can always create a new version.
  • When a published contract version is available but has not been signed, users will be asked to accept it the next time they visit a controller action that calls fine_print_get_signatures for that contract's name.

Customization

You can customize FinePrint's stylesheets, javascripts, views and even controllers to suit your needs.

Run the following command to copy a part of FinePrint into your main application:

$ rake fine_print:copy:folder

Where folder is one of stylesheets, layouts, views or controllers.

Example:

$ rake fine_print:copy:views

Alternatively, you can run the following command to copy all of the above into your main application:

$ rake fine_print:copy

Testing

From the gem's main folder, run bundle install, bundle exec rake db:migrate and then bundle exec rake to run all the specs.

Contributing

  1. Fork it
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Create specs for your feature
  4. Ensure that all specs pass
  5. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  6. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  7. Create new pull request