Simple CMS Plugin for Ruby on Rails Tutorial

December 23rd, 2007 by slaive

The SimpleCMS Plugin

Created by Slaive and PullMonkey (December 2007)

Check out the demo - http://pullmonkey.com/projects/simple_cms

This is still a work in progress so feel free to notify me of any bugs, problems, or suggestions of how to make it better.

This plugin is built for rails 2.0.2. So if you are using an older version of rails then you will need to edit each of the controllers

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From:
  self.view_paths << File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '..', 'views')

To:
  self.template_root = File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '..', 'views')

Imaging Processor

For this plugin to be fully functional you will need to install one of the following Image Processing gems:
  • ImageScience - A light inline-Ruby library that only resizes images.
  • RMagick - The grand-daddy, both in terms of advanced image processing features and memory usage.
  • minimagick - It's much easier on memory than RMagick because it runs the ImageMagick command in a shell.

Any one of these gems will work.


Install SimpleCMS and Dependencies

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ruby script/plugin install http://svn.pullmonkey.com/plugins/trunk/simple_cms/

The simple_cms plugin requires the attachment_fu, responds_to_parent, acts_as_versioned, and coderay plugins as well. To make this easier I there is a built-in rake process

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rake simple_cms:install_dependencies

However if this doesn't work then you can do it the normal way:

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ruby script/plugin install http://svn.pullmonkey.com/plugins/trunk/attachment_fu/
ruby script/plugin install http://svn.pullmonkey.com/plugins/trunk/responds_to_parent/
ruby script/plugin install http://svn.pullmonkey.com/plugins/trunk/acts_as_versioned/
ruby script/plugin install http://svn.pullmonkey.com/plugins/trunk/coderay/

The Javascript/css Files

This plugin requires a great deal of javascript and css files that will need to be copied to the corresponding folder in your public/ directory. These files are located in the simple_cms/assets/ directory.

These files should have been copied over when you install the plugin. However, I built in a couple rake task commands to help you out installing and uninstalling these files if you need to.

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rake simple_cms:install
rake simple_cms:uninstall

Creating the Tables

You will need to create 3 tables in your database.

  • simple_cms_items
  • simple_cms_images
  • simple_cms_media

To have the migration tables generated for you use this command:

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ruby script/generate simple_cms_migrations

The tables should look like this:

create_simple_cms_items.rb

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class CreateSimpleCmsItems < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :simple_cms_items do |t|
      t.column :params,     :string
      t.column :data,       :text
      t.column :position,   :integer
      t.column :created_at, :datetime
      t.column :updated_at, :datetime
      t.column :created_by, :string
      t.column :updated_by, :string
    end
    SimpleCmsItem.create_versioned_table
  end

  def self.down
    SimpleCmsItem.drop_versioned_table
    drop_table :simple_cms_items
  end
end

create_simple_cms_images.rb

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class CreateSimpleCmsImages < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :simple_cms_images do |t|
      t.column :parent_id,    :integer
      t.column :content_type, :string
      t.column :filename,     :string
      t.column :thumbnail,    :string
      t.column :size,         :integer
      t.column :width,        :integer
      t.column :height,       :integer
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :simple_cms_images
  end
end

create_simple_cms_medias.rb

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class CreateSimpleCmsMedias < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :simple_cms_medias do |t|
      t.column :parent_id,    :integer
      t.column :content_type, :string
      t.column :filename,     :string
      t.column :thumbnail,    :string
      t.column :size,         :integer
      t.column :width,        :integer
      t.column :height,       :integer
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :simple_cms_medias
  end
end

There is one more migration file you should have. It's called change_items_data_colmn and it looks like this:

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class ChangeItemsDataColumn < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    change_column :simple_cms_items, :data, :text, :limit => 10000000
  end

  def self.down
    change_column :simple_cms_items, :data, :text
  end
end

This is a change to the simple_cms_items table data column. This allows you to store up to 10 megabytes of text instead of the 65 kilobytes it defaulted to.


Remember to rake your tables into your databases once you have generated them.

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rake db:migrate

Javascript and css Include Tags

You will need to make sure you have javascript include tags for your defaults and simple_cms and stylesheet link tags for the simple_cms and coderay stylesheets. Your app/views/layouts/application.rhtml should look something like this:

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<html>
  <head>
    <%= javascript_include_tag :defaults, "simple_cms" %>
    <%= stylesheet_link_tag "simple_cms", "coderay" %>
  </head>
  <body>
    <%= yield %>
  </body>
</html>

In Your View

Having the simple_cms plugin show up is really pretty simple. Anywhere you want to have the simple_cms to show up you put one line as simple as this:

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<%= render :simpleCMS => "YourLabel", :admin => true %>

Here is another example with more options:

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<%= render :simpleCMS => "label", :admin => true,
                                  :user => "UserName",
                                  :prefix => "/whatever/your/prefix/is",
                                  :reusable => true %>
  • :simpleCMS takes a label. Changing this label means losing all your current content and creating a new one. However, you can always change it back.
  • :admin takes true or false. The default is false. If you pass true then when you run your mouse over the content a blue highlight box will appear and you will be able to click on the box and edit the content. If you pass false then you will only be able to see the content but not edit any of it.
  • :user is optional and it takes any string you pass it.
  • :prefix is optional. This is where you pass your prefix if you have one.
  • :reusable takes true or false. Default is false. Set this true if you want to use this same content on multiple pages. The label must be the same on all pages you are using this content. *NOTE* you will lose all current data for this content if you change this as it gives the content a different id and changes the params of how it is called.
Posted by slaive Filed in development, projects, rails, ruby, SimpleCMS

18 Responses to “Simple CMS Plugin for Ruby on Rails Tutorial”

  1. celpjefscycle Says:
    January 12th, 2008 at 02:14 AM Thanks for information.
    many interesting things
    Celpjefscylc
  2. aka Says:
    January 17th, 2008 at 11:51 AM This is a good thing. thanks
  3. anonymous Says:
    February 1st, 2008 at 01:10 AM Does simple cms do any caching?
  4. charlie Says:
    February 1st, 2008 at 07:02 PM No, but that is a good idea. Hopefully in the next release.
  5. jagdish Says:
    April 26th, 2008 at 05:37 AM Hey I have installed this plugin in my application. I followed all the as stated here. But in my application view file it comes only like this:

    Admin: enable disable
    Click to add content here.

    And nothing more than this.

    Plz let me know how to use it......

    Waiting for reply..............
  6. slaive Says:
    April 26th, 2008 at 02:10 PM @jagdish

    Well the first thing to do would be to check that the simple_cms.css file is in your public/stylesheets folder.

    Are you using IE or Firefox?

    If you are using Firefox use firebug and see if there are any errors when you load the page.

    If you are using IE there will be a yellow triangle in the bottom left corner that you can click on if there are any errors.

    Let me know what you find. There might be javascript errors in IE with the Admin enable/disable.
  7. Simon Jones Says:
    April 28th, 2008 at 01:18 PM Hi,

    I downloaded and tried to install this, this evening, but am having problems with the usage. I followed the guide and everything appears to have set up OK, the JS & CSS files have been copied into place, and included in the application.rhtml layout view. I have then included a simpleCMS field on my home page.

    I get a link that appears to be working, but when I click on it I am forwarded to an error page showing:

    Routing Error

    no route found to match "/simple_cms_items/edit/1" with {:method=>:get}

    Any ideas? I thought maybe the controllers/models/views etc might need to be copied in to my main applications folders, but this didn't work so I got rid of those and just left them in plugins folder.

    I also thought maybe the routes folder might need changing but had no idea what to change it to...

    Not seeing any errors on firebug.

    Any help much appreciated!

    Thanks,

    Simon
  8. slaive Says:
    April 28th, 2008 at 06:00 PM
    @Simon Jones

    You shouldn't have to change anything in the routes file or move the views over or anything.

    The problem could be that you have a prefix for your webpage that you need to pass to the simple_cms in the render using the :prefix option.

    Play around with that a bit and let me know if it still doesn't work.
  9. Avram Says:
    June 11th, 2008 at 12:43 PM Hey, this plugin is really nice, thanks.

    Is it possible to organize uploaded assets into folders, so there isn't a huge list of say photos to choose from?
  10. slaive Says:
    June 12th, 2008 at 12:28 PM As of right now, no there isn't, but I will keep that in mind for future versions. Thanks for the comment!
  11. Avram Says:
    June 12th, 2008 at 04:52 PM slaive,

    Ok, after an exhaustive review of Rails CMS's, I've selected SimpleCMS for a development effort I'm pretty deep into. I'm going to need to be adding a little bit of functionality to it on my side. If you like what I'm doing, I'd be happy to contribute it back to the main project.

    Would you mind emailing me out of band for a little chat about my intentions? I'd like your feedback.

    Thanks,
    Avram
  12. Peter Says:
    June 17th, 2008 at 06:30 PM Hi,
    Thanks for this wonderful and useful plugin!
    This evening i've played around a bit trying to get rails page-caching to work with the simple_cms plugin. The idea is to render both the admin version of the cms_item and the public version of the cms_item on a page and based on a cookie decide what version to show. I ran into some problems with this, probably because of all the the session variables which get set when the render method gets invoked. I wondered did you ever try to cache pages with simple cms items on it? Do you have a suggestion of i could proceed and implement it?

    Thanks!
    Cheers,
    Peter
  13. slaive Says:
    July 1st, 2008 at 12:01 PM
    Peter,

    I have not yet gotten a chance to really do much with caching yet. It is on my list though. Let me know if you figure it out before I do. ;)

  14. Peter Says:
    July 2nd, 2008 at 02:07 PM Thanks I'll let you know, although i don't think i'll get far with my limited ruby and rails knowledge.

    Today i installed simple_cms for a rails 2.1 site. I had to tweak a bit to get it to work, let me tell what i did:
    -the version of acts_as_versioned that is installed with the rake task doesn't work with rails 2.1, i installed a version from github instead.
    -in all simple_cms i had to use the append_view_path method: self.append_view_path (File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '..', 'views'))
    -rails couldn't find the _simple_cms_item.rhtml partial, i ended up copying it to the view folder of my own app.
    -in simple_cms.rb i had to add a unless text.nil? in line 82. after the text.scan block.
  15. slaive Says:
    July 7th, 2008 at 12:14 PM
    Peter,

    I have not yet upgraded to rails 2.1 so thanks for the update on what needs to be changed.

    However, in lib/simple_cms.rb in the shared_path method is where we set a path to the _simple_cms_item.rhtml partial so you might want to look at that.

    The other thing is that I believe you would want to use "fragment caching" for the simple_cms plugin. Although I haven't had a chance to make it work myself yet.
  16. charlie Says:
    July 17th, 2008 at 09:57 AM
    @Peter,Slaive - Made a couple changes for simple cms and 2.1, I will share them here and Slaive can take a crack at them.
    1) in plugins/simple_cms/lib/simple_cms.rb you can replaced the shared_path method with this:
    def shared_path(partial_path)
    return "shared/#{partial_path}"
    end
    2) in plugins/simple_cms/init.rb you can append the view paths for simple cms like this (this way you DO NOT have to take the simple_cms_item partial out of the plugin and place it in your view path):

    class ActionController::Base
    def self.inherited(klass)
    klass.append_view_path(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), 'app', 'views'))
    super
    end
    end
  17. chawei Says:
    September 30th, 2008 at 11:20 PM When I tried to add an item, I got this error:

    ActionView::TemplateError (You have a nil object when you didn't expect it!
    You might have expected an instance of Array.
    The error occurred while evaluating nil.include?) on line #1 of cms/index.html.erb:
    1: <%= render :simpleCMS => "YourLabel", :admin => true %>

    I found out this was a bug of "acts_as_versioned", and this can be fixed according to this issue: http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/browse_thread/thread/125555dab7852bb2
  18. Charlie Says:
    October 1st, 2008 at 02:27 PM
    @chawei - thanks for the information. I assume it is all working now?

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