Deprecated as of September 19, 2024

paul_revere has been deprecated. We recommend using the noticed gem.

Paul Revere

This gem enables the inclusion of "one off" announcements in Rails applications.

Installation

First, include the gem as normal in your Gemfile:

gem "paul_revere"

Then, run the generator to create the migration and copy the javascript.

rails generate paul_revere

The announcements JS will be installed into vendor/assets/javascripts. You can add the announcement JS to app/assets/javascripts/application.js:

//= require announcements

This will include the javascript into the application.js for the entire site.

Finally, create the announcements table by running the migration:

rake db:migrate

Copy built-in partials into your Rails application by running:

rails generate paul_revere:views

Background

Paul Revere provides...

A model called Announcement, which has timestamps and a "body" text column.
A current class method on Announcement which returns the latest Announcement, or a new unsaved instance.
A view helper called #current_announcement, which will return that latest Announcement record.
A view partial called _public_announcement, which is intended to be shown to all site users.
A view partial called _private_announcement, which is intended to be shown only to logged in users. Note that this merely wraps the rendering of the public announcement with a call to a helper which checks that a user is signed in. There is only one type of Announcement.
A view partial called _email_announcement, which is intended to be used in site emails which are sent out and need to include announcements.

Usage

Install the gem, run the migration, ensure the javascript can be accessed.
Use those partials in the correct places in your view code and mailer view code where you want announcements to show up.

For example, to include the latest announcement for all site users:

<%= render "announcements/public_announcement" %>

To make an announcement, use the Rails console to create a new record:

Announcement.create!(body: "Free ice cream on Monday!")

There is a helper method called announcement_visibility_allowed?, which is what the private_announcement partial calls to determine whether to allow the current session to view announcements. The built-in implementation just checks that current_user is truth-y. Override that helper method if you want to do something more interesting as a check here.

License

About thoughtbot

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