FinePrint

FinePrint is a Rails engine in gem form that makes managing web site agreements (terms of use, 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 your 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 setup this proc to return true for your admins.

Usage

You can choose to check if users signed contracts either as a before_filter or inside your controller actions.

Option 1 - As a before_filter

If you choose to have FinePrint work like a before_filter, you can user the following 3 class methods, which are automatically added to all of your controllers:

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

They work as follows:

fine_print_get_signatures will redirect the user To require that your users sign the most recent version of a contract, call fine_print_get_signatures in your controller classes. It works just like a before_filter (in fact, it will add a before_filter for you).

This method takes a list of contract names to check (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 options 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 (by default 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 can 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

Option 2 - Inside your controller actions

If instead you have to check for contracts inside controller action methods, you can use the following 2 instance methods, also automatically added to all of your controllers:

fine_print_get_unsigned_contract_names(contract_names)
fine_print_redirect(unsigned_contract_names)

This can be done in one line, like so:

fine_print_redirect(fine_print_get_unsigned_contract_names(contract_names))

The fine_print_get_unsigned_contract_names method can return nil if no contracts are provided or if the user cannot sign contracts; otherwise, it returns an array of the contract names the user has not yet signed.

Keep in mind that fine_print_redirect might cause a redirect, so if your controller action also needs to redirect, you should check the output of fine_print_get_unsigned_contract_names. This method will not redirect the user if either the array of contract names to sign is blank or if the user_can_sign_proc returns false when called with the user as an argument.

Displaying and signing contracts

When a set of contracts is found by FinePrint to be required but unsigned, and the user is allowed to sign contracts, FinePrint redirects the user to the path specified by the contract_redirect_path configuration variable, with the names of the unsigned contracts passed along in the params hash. The param key for the unsigned contract names array is determined by the contract_param_name configuration variable (default is :contracts).

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 will mark the contract as signed using the FinePrint.sign_contract method. The following methods in the FinePrint module can be used to help you find contract objects and mark them as signed:

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

If you require more explanation about these methods and their arguments, check the lib/fine_print.rb file.

Redirecting users back

Regardless if you use fine_print_get_signatures or fine_print_redirect, after your contract is signed you can use the fine_print_return controller instance method to send the user back to the place where they came from.

If there are multiple unsigned contracts, you are not required to get the user to sign them all at once. One strategy is to present only the first unsigned contract to them. Once they sign it, they'll be redirected to where they were trying to go and FinePrint will once again determine that they still have remaining unsigned contracts, and redirect them back to your contract_redirect_path with one less 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 and even site admins.
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 either fine_print_get_signatures or the controller fine_print instance methods with 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

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