Introducing: cms_manageable

[Emerson]

Have you ever been working on a project and wanted to treat one of your existing models just like a Cms::Page object?

At first this might sound bizarre, but I assure you, the use case is real, awesome, and actually has minimal impact on the comfy codebase. Let's take a moment to think this through....

Anyone who knows Comfy understands that its real benefit comes from layouts, tags, and blocks. Writing a layout that generates a dynamic form is a huge time saver and there have been a number of occasions where I've wanted the magic of Comfy mixed into my boring old Rails models. So with this in mind, I'd like to introduce cms_manageable.

What Does It Do?

Let's start with a boring old rails model:

class BoringModel < ActiveRecord::Base

  validates :is_boring, presence: true

end

So hey, let's spice things up by adding in the cms_manageable behaviour. The only requirements are that we provide a layout method that returns a proper Comfy layout and add a content column on the model. Once you've done this, the benefits are clear:

class BoringModel < ActiveRecord::Base

  validates :is_awesome, presence: true

  cms_manageable

  # Your job to figure out a nice way to handle this...
  def layout
    Cms::Layout.new(content: "<p>{{ cms:page:random_content }}</p>")
  end

end


# Let's assume we have an instance of our BoringModel
boring_model = BoringModel.first
# Set some blocks that match the layout we defined in the class...
boring_model.blocks_attributes = [{ :identifier => 'random_content', :content => 'not so boring anymore ;-)' }]

boring_model.render
#=> "<p>not so boring anymore ;-)</p>"

c'est bon, non?

But Why?

The possibilities are endless. Blocks. Layouts. Revisions. Rendering. Form Builders. Etc...

But How?

Cms::Blocks are now polymorphic. Mind == Blown.

What About Forms?

Ahhh, yes. Let's use some of those sweet sweet Comfy forms. Obviously the context of this code is within your admin area:

.row-fluid
  .span12
.page-header
  = comfy_form_for @awesome_model do |form|
    = form.text_field :title  
    = form.text_area :normal_boring_stuff
    / Bring the awesome...
    / renders the Comfy form builder and handles any blocks you have...
    / it's an engine, so just override it if you need anything special 
    = render partial: 'admin/cms/pages/form_blocks', locals: {cms_object: form.object}

[GBH]

Amazing. This calls for a 1.12.0 release.
There a few minor potential issues I need to check before merging.

Few things that spring to mind:

• cms_has_revisions_for should not be part of the module. It only deals with blocks, if might want to version other attributes in your boring model.
• ability to associate BoringModel with Cms::Layout is there, so we need to make sure that view helper to select layouts is available
• I wonder how does Site segmentation comes into play here? Does it even matter?
• upgrade Migration

[hesham]

This is fucking great! May I suggest another name for the extension? cms_manageable instead of cms_acts_as_cms.

[GBH]

1. cms_powered
2. cms_managed
3. cms_enabled
4. cms_enhanced
5. cms_driven
6. cms_boosted

[hesham]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgS4I-47mJc

[GBH]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29M_VElHoFI

[hesham]

it's not enterprisey enough

[GBH]

1. cms_vertical_integration
2. cms_leverage
3. cms_paradigm
4. cms_synergy
5. cms_thought_leader

[Emerson]

+1 cms_manageable

[Emerson]

@GBH

• Now using cms_manageable. It's much nicer sounding and makes good sense.
• I've added an upgrade migration. I copied it over to my local Comfy project, ran it, and everything worked. You might want to take a quick look just in case, specifically around the naming of the migration (I'm not great with migrations).
• I think the layouts should be fully handled by the host app. Let's see how my current app ends up. Perhaps I'll need this functionality anyways.
• I can't see any reason that the changes I've made to blocks would affect Site segmentation, but you know this library better than me.

[coveralls]

Coverage decreased (-0.02%) when pulling aee5a36 on Emerson:feature/acts_as_cms into 3a80f19 on comfy:master.

[GBH]

p used to stand for page

[Emerson]

@GBH - Just pushed some cleanup here.

[Emerson]

Feels.