File: README — Documentation for form

FormCutter

The default rails form builder is great but it is so tedious to change the html that goes around it. This gem wraps your html around the form elements. So all you have to do is this:

<%= f.text_field :name %>

And add your html template in app/views/forms/text_field.html.erb like this:

<div class="forms">
  <%= label(object_name, method, label_name) %><em><%= required %></em><br/>
  <%= text_field(object_name, method, options) %>
  <% if hint.present? %><p><%= hint %></p><% end %>
</div>

Installation

Install the gem:

gem install form_cutter

Add it to your Gemfile:

gem "form_cutter"

Run the generator:

rails generate form_cutter:install

Usage

Use the form builders normally, except don’t add any markup (unless you want to).

<%= form_for @post do |f| %>
  <fieldset>
    <%= f.text_field :title %>
    <%= f.text_area :body %>
    <%= f.select :section, choices %>
    <%= f.radio_button :am_fm %>
    <%= f.check_box :terms_and_conditions %>
  </fieldset>
  <div class="buttons">
    <%= f.sumbit 'Save' %>
  </div>
<% end %>

The form builders will now wrap all form helper methods with your html.

You’re done.

Customization

There will always be an exception to the rule. So there are 2 ways to change the html wrapper.

Like a resource - by creating a directory inside forms/, app/views/forms/blog/.
Passing the :template option - either false or the ‘path/to/template’.

It will render the first erb template that it finds. If you use <%= f.text_field :title, :template => 'custom' %> for the @blog model, it looks in this order:

forms/blog/custom.html.erb
forms/custom.html.erb
forms/custom/title.html.erb
forms/custom/text_field.html.erb
forms/custom/default.html.erb
forms/title.html.erb
forms/blog/text_field.html.erb
forms/text_field.html.erb
forms/default.html.erb

One more thing

You can pass :report => true and you get an instant view page.

This will search in app/views/reports/ instead of app/views/forms/.

<%= f.text_field(:title, :report => true) %>

Other options

You can pass any options to the helper methods. These will become availble in the.

<%= f.text_field(:title, :hint => 'This is a field hint', :anything => 'anything you want') %>

Will give you:

<%= hint %>
=> 'This is a field hint'

<%= options[:anything] %>
=> 'anything you want'

FormCutter has several configuration values. You can read and change them in the initializer created by FormCutter, so if you haven’t executed the command below yet, please do:

rails generate form_cutter:install

TODO

Please refer to TODO file.

Maintainers

Benjamin Lewis (github.com/23inhouse)

Bugs and Feedback

If you discover any bugs or want to drop a line, feel free to create an issue on GitHub.

github.com/23inhouse/form_cutter/issues