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https://github.com/floere/contexts

Simple sidebars (or Cart, or Components) for Rails
https://github.com/floere/contexts

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Simple sidebars (or Cart, or Components) for Rails

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README 

        
h1. Contexts



*A Rails 2 Plugin. This plugin is a simple alternative for components*.



Feedback please to @florian.hanke+contexts at gmail.com@, thanks! :)



h2. Simple components alternative



This plugin is a simple alternative for components.



It is not a full replacement, however. It aims lower, namely:

* Sub-per-action component definitions.

* Built-in caching.



h2. It is good, when:



# You wish to define certain view parts that are used for many controller actions.

# You wish to cache these view parts.

# You wish to not have specific controllers to load the content for these view parts.



h3. Example use cases



* Checkout Cart displayed in site sidebar.

* Explorative Elements (e.g. Top Ten Books) in Sidebars.

* Navigational Elements on almost all pages.



And so on…



h2. Usage



In the view, e.g. application.haml call



render_context context_category_name



h3. Examples



h4. Context chosen defined in the controller.



render_context :left_sidebar



In this case, the specific context is determined by the controller, just

define the context for this controller as follows:



context context_category_name,

  default_context_name,

  [action_name, other_action_name] => action_specific_context_name,

  some_other_action_name => yet_another_action_specific_context_name



*OR* by using a block



context context_category_name do

  # determine a context type as you wish (e.g. randomly),

  # then return the context name

end



Use @top_ten_books@ as context for the context category @left_sidebar@ in _all_ actions:



context :left_sidebar, :top_ten_books



Use top_ten_books as context for the context category @left_sidebar@ in all

actions _except_ @buy@, @browse@ and @login@. Use @other_books_you_might_like@

for @buy@ and @browse@, and @welcome@ for the @login@ action:



context :left_sidebar, :top_ten_books,

  [:buy, :browse] => :other_books_you_might_like,

  :login => :welcome



*OR* if the specific context type should _not_ be determined by the controller.



render_context context_category_name, context_type_name



h4. Explicit context (Context not determined in the controller).



The following just renders the context for the top ten books in the left sidebar

without asking the controller to determine which context type should be used for

the left sidebar.



render_context :left_sidebar, :top_ten_books



h4. Loading variables for your contexts.



Loading variables for your contexts is done in the ApplicationController

(or if it should not be available everywhere in the Controller needed)



In your ApplicationController call the following to load instance variables for the context in category and type.



load_context(category, type, options = {}, &loading_instance_variables_block)



Currently supported options are @cache@, e.g.:



:cache => 7.minutes



This loads the top ten books into the variable @@books@:



load_context :left_sidebar, :top_ten_books, :cache => 5.minutes do

  @books = Books.top(10)

end



which can then be used in the partial @contexts/left_sidebar/_top_ten_books.html.haml@:



%h1 Top Ten Books

- for book in @books do

  %h2= book.title

  %p= book.description

  = link_to_add_to_cart(book)



The context view files should be in @views/contexts//.html.haml@ (or @.text.erb@ or what have you, depending on the request format)



The file in the example above would be in:

@app/views/contexts/left_sidebar/top_ten_books.html.haml@