High Voltage
Rails engine for static pages.
... but be careful. Danger!
Static pages?
Yeah, like "About us", "Directions", marketing pages, etc.
Installation
$ gem install high_voltage
Include in your Gemfile:
gem "high_voltage"
For Rails versions prior to 3.0, use the 0.9.2 tag of high_voltage:
https://github.com/thoughtbot/high_voltage/tree/v0.9.2
Usage
Write your static pages and put them in the RAILS_ROOT/app/views/pages directory.
$ mkdir app/views/pages
$ touch app/views/pages/about.html.erb
After putting something interesting there, you can link to it from anywhere in your app with:
link_to "About", page_path("about")
This will also work, if you like the more explicit style:
link_to "About", page_path(:id => "about")
You can nest pages in a directory structure, if that makes sense from a URL perspective for you:
link_to "Q4 Reports", page_path("about/corporate/policies/HR/en_US/biz/sales/Quarter-Four")
Bam.
Routes
By default, the static page routes will be like /pages/:id (where :id is the view filename).
If you want to route to a static page in another location (for example, a homepage), do this:
match 'pages/home' => 'high_voltage/pages#show', :id => 'home'
In that case, you'd need an app/views/pages/home.html.erb file.
Generally speaking, you need to route to the 'show' action with an :id param of the view filename.
High Voltage will generate a named route method of page_path
which you can use, as well. If you
want to generate a named route (with the :as routing option) for some route which will be handled
by High Voltage, make sure not to use :page as the name, because that will conflict with the named
route generated by High Voltage itself. For example, this will work for top-level routes (we will
get a named route called static_path
which does not conflict with the generated page_path
method):
match '/:id' => 'high_voltage/pages#show', :as => :static, :via => :get
You can route the root url to a high voltage page like this:
root :to => 'high_voltage/pages#show', :id => 'home'
Which will render a homepage from app/views/pages/home.html.erb
Customize
High Voltage uses a default path and folder of 'pages', i.e. 'url.com/pages/contact' , 'app/views/pages'
You can change this in an initializer:
HighVoltage.content_path = "site/"
Override
Most common reasons to override?
- You need authentication around the pages to make sure a user is signed in.
- You need to render different layouts for different pages.
Create a PagesController of your own:
$ rails generate controller pages
Override the default route:
# in config/routes.rb
resources :pages
Then modify it to subclass from High Voltage, adding whatever you need:
class PagesController < HighVoltage::PagesController
before_filter :authenticate
layout :layout_for_page
protected
def layout_for_page
case params[:id]
when 'home'
'home'
else
'application'
end
end
end
Testing
Just a suggestion, but you can test your pages using Shoulda pretty easily:
class PagesControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
tests PagesController
%w(earn_money screencast about contact).each do |page|
context "on GET to /pages/#{page}" do
setup { get :show, :id => page }
should_respond_with :success
should_render_template page
end
end
end
If you're not using a custom PagesController be sure to test HighVoltage::PagesController
instead.
Enjoy!
Contributing
Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
Credits
High Voltage is maintained and funded by thoughtbot, inc
Thank you to all the contributors!
The names and logos for thoughtbot are trademarks of thoughtbot, inc.
License
High Voltage is Copyright © 2009-2011 thoughtbot. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the MIT-LICENSE file.