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https://github.com/apotonick/apotomo

MVC Components for Rails.
https://github.com/apotonick/apotomo

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MVC Components for Rails.

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README 

        
# Apotomo



**Web Components for Rails.**



## Overview



Do you need an _interactive user interface_ for your Rails application? A cool Rich Client Application with dashboards, portlets and AJAX, Drag&Drop and jQuery?



Is your controller gettin' fat? And your partial-helper-AJAX pile is getting out of control?



Do you want a framework to make the implementation easier? _You want Apotomo._



**Apotomo** is based on [Cells](http://github.com/apotonick/cells), the popular View Components framework for Rails.



It gives you widgets and encapsulation, bubbling events, AJAX page updates, rock-solid testing and more. Check out  for more information.



## Installation



Easy as hell. You just need Ruby 1.9.3/2.0.0 and Rails 3/4.



Add Apotomo to your `Gemfile`:



```ruby

gem 'apotomo'

```



## Example



A _shitty_ example is worse than a _shitty_ framework, so let's choose wisely...



Say you had a blog application. The page showing the post should have a comments block, with a list of comments and a form to post a new comment. Submitting should validate and send back the updated comments list, via AJAX.



Let's wrap that comments block in a widget.



## Generate



Go and generate a widget stub.



```shell

rails generate apotomo:widget Comments display write -e haml

```



```

create  app/widgets/

create  app/widgets/comments_widget.rb

create  app/widgets/comments/

create  app/widgets/comments/display.html.haml

create  app/widgets/comments/write.html.haml

create  test/widgets/

create  test/widgets/comments_widget_test.rb

```



Nothing special.



## Plug it in



You now tell your controller about the new widget.



```ruby

class PostsController < ApplicationController



  has_widgets do |root|

    root << widget(:comments, :post => @post)

  end

```



This creates a widget instance called `comments_widget` from the class CommentsWidget.  We pass the current post into the widget - the block is executed in controller instance context, that's were `@post` comes from. Handy, isn't it?



## Render the widget



Rendering usually happens in your controller view, `app/views/posts/show.html.haml`, for instance.



```haml

%h1= @post.title

%p

  = @post.body

%p

  = render_widget :comments, post: @post

```



## Write the widget



A widget is like a cell which is like a mini-controller.



```ruby

class CommentsWidget < Apotomo::Widget

  responds_to_event :post



  def display(args)

    @comments = args[:post].comments # the parameter from outside.



    render

  end

```



Having `display` as the default state when rendering, this method collects comments to show and renders its view.



And look at line 2 - if encountering a `:post` event we invoke `#post`, which is simply another state. How cool is that?



```ruby

  def post(event)

    @comment = Comment.new :post_id => event[:post_id]

    @comment.update_attributes event[:comment] # a bit like params[].



    update :state => :display

  end

end

```



The event is processed with three steps in our widget:



* create the new comment

* re-render the `display` state

* update itself on the page



Apotomo helps you focusing on your app and takes away the pain of _action dispatching_ and _page updating_.



## Triggering events



So how and where is the `:post` event triggered?



Take a look at the widget's view `display.html.haml`.



```haml

= widget_div do

  %ul

    - for comment in @comments

      %li= comment.text



  = form_for :comment, :url => url_for_event(:post), :remote => true do |f|

    = f.text_field :text

    = f.submit

```



That's a lot of familiar view code, almost looks like a _partial_.



As soon as the form is submitted, the form gets serialized and sent using the standard Rails mechanisms. The interesting part here is the endpoint URL returned by #url_for_event as it will trigger an Apotomo event.



## Event processing



Now what happens when the event request is sent? Apotomo - again - does three things for you, it



* _accepts the request_ on a special event route it adds to your app

* _triggers the event_ in your ruby widget tree, which will invoke the `#post` state in our comment widget

* _sends back_ the page updates your widgets rendered



## JavaScript Agnosticism



In this example, we use jQuery for triggering. We could  also use Prototype, RightJS, YUI, or a self-baked framework, that's up to you.



Also, updating the page is in your hands. Where Apotomo provides handy helpers as `#replace`, you could also _emit your own JavaScript_.



Look, `replace` basically generates



```ruby

jQuery("comments").replaceWith();

```



If that's not what you want, do



```ruby

def post(event)

  if event[:comment][:text].explicit?

    render :text => 'alert("Hey, you wanted to submit a pervert comment!");'

  end

end

```



Apotomo doesn't depend on _any_ JS framework - you choose!



## Testing



Apotomo comes with its own test case and assertions to _build rock-solid web components_.



```ruby

class CommentsWidgetTest < Apotomo::TestCase

  has_widgets do |root|

    root << widget(:comments, :post => @pervert_post)

  end



  def test_render

    render_widget :comments

    assert_select "li#me"



    trigger :post, :comment => {:text => "Sex on the beach"}

    assert_response 'alert("Hey, you wanted to submit a pervert comment!");'

  end

end

```



You can render your widgets, spec the markup, trigger events and assert the event responses, so far. If you need more, let us know!



**Using rspec?** please check out [rspec-apotomo].



## Bubbling events



Note: Let's write this paragraph!



## Bugs, Community



Please visit , the official project page with _lots_ of examples.



If you have questions, visit us in the IRC channel #cells at irc.freenode.org.



If you wanna be cool, subscribe to our [feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/Apotomo)!



## License



Copyright (c) 2007-2013 Nick Sutterer 



Released under the MIT License.



  [rspec-apotomo]: https://github.com/apotonick/rspec-apotomo "apotonick/rspec-apotomo"