Rails Utils Gem Version Build Status

Rails helpers based on opinionated project practices. Useful for structuring CSS and JavaScript, display title of the page, and flash messages with Bootstrap.

Installation

Add rails_utils to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'rails_utils'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

gem install 'rails_utils'

Usage

#page_class

This helper method returns controller name and action name as a single string value, which can be used to target CSS styles specifically for this controller or action.

For example, when controller and action is animes#show, you can use page_class to include the controller name and action name as CSS classes on the page.

<body class=<%= page_class %>>
  ...
</body>

becomes

<body class='animes show'>
  ...
</body>

Then in your CSS, you can either target your styles specific to controller and/or action.

body.animes {
  background: black;
}

body.animes.show {
  font-size: 24px;
}

Usually, when the create or update actions render, the new or edit views will be rendered due to a form error.

Therefore the page_class helper converts create to new and update to edit so that you only need to write CSS to target new and edit, and not all four actions.

For finer grained control, you can also choose the use the 2 methods that are used to build page_class individually.

The two methods are page_controller_class and page_action_class.

#page_title

This helper method returns page title based on controller name and action name.

When controller and action is animes#show you can easily use page_title like:

<div class="page-title">
  <%= page_title %>
</div>

becomes

<div class="page-title">
  Animes Show
</div>

Besides, it supports I18n and interpolation:

en:
  animes:
    show:
      title: Showing anime of: %{anime_name}

Pass in anime_name:

<div class="page-title">
  <%= page_title(anime_name: "Frozen") %>
</div>

becomes

<div class="page-title">
  Showing anime of: Frozen
</div>

#javascript_initialization

This helper method attempts to initialize JavaScript classes and methods based on a standard structure.

With this standard structure, calling your JavaScript has never been easier.

Add javascript_initialization to the bottom of your layout:

<%= javascript_initialization %>

When application is MyApp, and controller/action is animes#show, javascript_initialization compiles to:

<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
        MyApp.init();
        if(MyApp.animes) {
          if(MyApp.animes.init) { MyApp.animes.init(); }
          if(MyApp.animes.show && MyApp.animes.show.init) { MyApp.animes.show.init(); }
        }
//]]>
</script>

By looking at the compiled JavaScript output, it should be apparent on how you should structure your JavaScript:

// Sample application.js
window.MyApp = {
  init: function() {
    console.log("Init!")
  }
}

As similar to page_class, create is mapped to new and update is mapped to edit.

#flash_messages

This helper method prints Rails flash messages with classes that correspond to Bootstrap's convention.

Just invoke flash_messages anywhere within layout/application.

<%= flash_messages %>

Suppose there's a flash[:success], you should see:

<div class="alert alert-success fade in">
  <button class="close" data-dismiss-alert="alert" type="button">x</button>
  <p>flash is success</p>
</div>

You can also:

  • Add additional CSS classes to the alert with the class option.
  • Customize the close button with button_html and button_class options.

Configuration

Override any of these defaults in config/initializers/rails_utils.rb:

RailsUtils.configure do |config|
  config.selector_format = :underscored # or :hyphenated
end

Contributing

Pull Requests are very welcomed (with specs, of course)!

Minitest-ed. To run all tests, just run rake or rake test.

Author

Rails Utils is maintained by Winston Teo.

You should follow Winston on Twitter, or find out more on WinstonYW and LinkedIn.

License

Copyright © 2013-2016 Winston Teo Yong Wei. Free software, released under the MIT license.