nanoware

I was showing some of the cool new stuff in Roar to Bryan, and all he keeps saying is, “You don’t believe in release early, release often, do you?”. Guilty as charged—but I’ve been cooking up some pretty sweet things in the meantime. This release inspired by Peter Gunn, Hellecasters Here goes with a laundry list of some of the things that roar can now do that has me pretty excited: du du du du du du du du…

How about door number 1, with dynamic repeating fields:

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# team.rb
class Team < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :players
  has_many :users, :through=>:players
end

# TeamsController:
form do
  text_field :name
  text_area :description
  select_field :league_id, :choices=>League.to_select
  has_many :players do
     auto_complete :user
     check_box :captain
     check_box :admin
  end
end

This produces repeating, nested forms on the collection, so you can edit the team and its players with one form. The result:

“Add Another” allows you to keep adding entries to the bottom of the form (via javascript).

Or door number 2, with how do you want your roar?

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# routes.rb: The two lines are equivalent:
map.roar :users
map.resources :users, :path_prefix => "/admin", 
  :name_prefix => "roar_", :member => { :delete => :get }

# users_controller
roar :prefix => "admin" do
  table do
    edit :login
  end

  form do
    text_field :login
    # more fields
  end
end

Then you can access the admin backend at /admin/users. Using the domain to control routing still works with roar :subdomain => "admin" do. Pick whatever makes the most sense, or…

Door number 3, have your cake and eat it too…

After going back into the public views, I started to miss the roar convenience. I wanted to actually eat cake, so let there be cake!

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class PostsController < ApplicationController
  roar :prefix => "admin" do
    # Admin definition here
  end
                
  roar :view => "show" do
     # public view here
   end
end

It’s a big hallway: Table actions

Define actions that happen to data as a collection:

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table(:name => "table") do
  action
  edit :description
  boolean :done
  actions do
    done
    undone :name=>"Not Done"
    delete_checked :confirm=>"Delete all checked todos?"
  end
end

Creates:

Multiple data views

The above screenshot actually shows an alternate data view (data as a list). Multiple views can be defined side by side, and switched between with the view url parameter.

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table(:view => "list") do
  action
  edit :description
  boolean :done
  actions { sortable;   done;   undone :name => "Not Done";
    delete_checked :confirm=>"Delete all checked todos?"
  }
end

Sortable

The list view can take a sortable action, for data that acts_as_list.

Separate new/edit forms:

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new_form do
  text_field :username
  text_field :password
end

edit_form do
  text_field :firstname
  text_field :lastname
  text_area :bio
end

Where to from here?

Roar is still in a constant state of flux, so there will be api changes, but the more feedback, the faster it’ll stabilize. Check it out at: http://nanoware.com/roar