joshmn/active_action

An elegant DSL to define batch actions in your Rails controllers and display them in your views.

ActiveAction

An elegant DSL to define batch actions in your Rails controllers and display them in your views.

Idea

The idea of ActiveAction is to use a form object to submit the form, but changing the action you submit to — as chosen by the user in your batch actions selection.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'active_action'

And then execute:

$ bundle

And restart your Rails server.

Usage

Use the active_action :route, options = {} DSL to define a batch action.

Then build your batch action dropdown with active_actions.each { ... } in your view.

Step-by-step

Controller

Define your actions.

class NotificationsController < ApplicationController  
  active_action :mark_as_read, label: "Mark selected as read"
  
  def mark_as_read
    notifications = Notification.find(params[:collection_ids])
    notifications.update_all(read: true)
    redirect_to notifications_path, notice: "Marked as read"
  end
end

View

Wrap your ActiveRecord collection (or whatever collection) into a form object. Then, drop in a button to handle the batch actions you defined in your controller.

<%= simple_form_for :notifications do |f| %>
    <div class="dropdown">
      <a class="btn btn-secondary dropdown-toggle active_actions_button" disabled="disabled" href="#" id="activeActionsButton" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">Actions</a>
      <div class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelled-by="activeActionsButton">
        <% active_actions_for(:all).each do |action| %>
          <a class="dropdown-item active_action" href="javascript:;" data-action="<%= action.path %>"><%= action.label %></a>
        <% end %>
      </div>
    </div>
    <table>
        <thead>
            <tr>
                <td></td>
                <td>Content</td>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <% @notifications.each do |notification| %>
                <tr>
                    <td><input type="checkbox" name="collection_ids[]" value=<%= notification.id %>" /></td>
                    <td><%= notification.content %></td>
                </tr>
            <% end %>
        </tbody>
    </table>
<% end %>

And some Javascript

Lastly, drop in some Javascript to handle changing the form action.

$('.active_action').on('click', function() {
    var form = $(this).closest('form');
    form.attr('action', form.attr('action') + "/" + $(this).attr('data-action'));
    form.submit();
});

Frequently asked questions

I want to submit to a member route. What does my view look like?

Just change what the form submits to. More info with examples here.

<%= simple_form_for @restaurant do |f| %>
    <%= active_actions_button_for(:beers) %>
    <table>
        <thead>
            <tr>
                <td></td>
                <td>Beer name</td>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <% @resetaurant.beers.each do |beer| %>
                <tr>
                    <td><input type="checkbox" name="collection_ids[]" value=<%= beer.id %>" /></td>
                    <td><%= beer.name %></td>
                </tr>
            <% end %>
        </tbody>
    </table>
<% end %>

Frequently asked questions

Does this come with javascript to handle select-all-ish functionality?

Nope. But you can use what I've been using for my projects.

What's a scope?

A scope merely defines what context a active action is relevant to inside its controller. Say you had RestaurantsController and you wanted to "Mark as visited" (for :restaurants), or for their beers selection (presumably on your restaurants#show view), "Mark [beer] as consumed" for :beers. You could define these as separate scopes for your active actions array.

Defaults to :all.

Why don't you just d—

Because I loathe javascript.