Simple CMS Plugin for Rails Demo

I have placed a nice little demo of this plugin under Pullmonkey Projects - http://pullmonkey.com/projects/simple_cms.

Please let us know what works, what does not work.

Thank you.

Simple CMS Plugin for Ruby on Rails Tutorial

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.

Rails date select bug with discard and disable

Code that breaks

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<%= date_select "object", "attr", 
                 :index       => "", 
                 :start_year  => Date.today.year, 
                 :discard_day => true, 
                 :disabled    => true, 
                 :order       => [:month, :year] %>

HTML that is produced

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<input id="object__attr_3i" 
       type="hidden" 
       value="1" 
       name="object[object_attributes][][attr(3i)]"/>
<select id="object_attr_attributes__attr_2i" 
        disabled="disabled" 
        name="object[object_attributes][][attr(2i)]">
...
</select>
<select id="object_attributes__attr_1i" 
        disabled="disabled" 
        name="object[object_attributes][][attr(1i)]">
...
</select>

The Problem

Note that this may be fixed now in version 2.0 of rails. So the problem arises when you use both the options of disabled and discard for the date_select helper. By themselves they work fine and without problems. When you use them together the discard option overrides the disabled option. In the example above, I discard the day and want the entire element to be disabled. The resulting HTML hides the day selector but does not disable it. So, when the form is submitted the date select day is bundled in with the rest of the parameters as a hash of just the day. If it had been hidden and disabled, then we could have ignored it.

The offending Rails Helper code

hidden_html(...) is used anytime discard_<something> is set to true.

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module ActionView
  module Helpers
    ...
    module DateHelper
      ...
      def hidden_html(type, value, options)
        name_and_id_from_options(options, type)
        hidden_html = %(<input type="hidden" id="#{options[:id]}" name="#{options[:name]}" value="#{value}" />\n)
      end
      ...
    end
  end
end

The fix

Note that in the above code there is no reference to the disabled parameter that was set. Using a mixin, you can create a file in RAILS_ROOT/lib named date_select_fix.rb with the following code:

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module ActionView
  module Helpers
    ...
    module DateHelper
      ...
      def hidden_html(type, value, options)
        name_and_id_from_options(options, type)
        hidden_html = %(<input type="hidden" id="#{options[:id]}" name="#{options[:name]}" value="#{value}"#{" disabled=\"disabled\"" if options[:disabled]} />\n)
      end
      ...
    end
  end
end

Works for me. Just for the record, the project that I found this bug in is still using rails 1.2.1 and actionpack 1.13.1.