TabsOnRails

TabsOnRails is a simple Rails plugin for creating and managing Tabs. It provides helpers for creating tabs with a flexible interface.

Requirements

• Ruby >= 1.8.6
• Rails >= 2.2

Note. TabsOnRails doesn’t work with Rails 2.1 or previous versions (see Ticket #245).

Rails Installation

As a Gem

This is the preferred way to install TabsOnRails and the best way if you want install a stable version. The GEM is hosted on Gemcutter.

  $ gem install tabs_on_rails --source http://gemcutter.org

With Rails >= 2.2, you can specify the GEM dependency in your environment.rb file so that Rails will automatically check the requirement on startup.

  Rails::Initializer.run do |config|

    # other configurations
    # ...

    config.gem "tabs_on_rails", :source => "http://gemcutter.org"

  end

As a Plugin

This is the preferred way if you want to live on the edge and install a development version.

  $ script/plugin install git://github.com/weppos/tabs_on_rails.git

Usage

In your template use the tabs_tag helper to create your tab.

  <% tabs_tag do |tab| %>
    <%= tab.home      'Homepage', root_path %>
    <%= tab.dashboard 'Dashboard', dashboard_path %>
    <%= tab.account   'Account', account_path %>
  <% end %>

The example above produces the following HTML output.

  <ul>
    <li><a href="/">Homepage</a></li>
    <li><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
    <li><a href="/account">Account</a></li>
  </ul>

The usage is similar to the Rails route file. You create named tabs with the syntax tab.name_of_tab.

The name you use creating a tab is the same you’re going to refer to in your controller when you want to mark a tab as the current tab.

  class DashboardController < ApplicationController
    set_tab :dashboard
  end

Now, if the action belongs to DashboardController, the template will automatically render the following HTML code.

  <ul>
    <li><a href="/">Homepage</a></li>
    <li><span>Dashboard</span></li>
    <li><a href="/account">Account</a></li>
  </ul>

Use the current_tab helper method if you need to access the value of current tab in your controller or template.

  class DashboardController < ApplicationController
    set_tab :dashboard
  end

  # In your view
  <p>The name of current tab is <%= current_tab %>.</p>

The open_tag can be customized with the `:open_tabs` option.

  <% tabs_tag :open_tabs => { :id => "tabs", :class => "cool" } do |tab| %>
    <%= tab.home      'Homepage', root_path %>
    <%= tab.dashboard 'Dashboard', dashboard_path %>
    <%= tab.account   'Account', account_path %>
  <% end %>

  <ul id="tabs" class="cool">
    <li><a href="/">Homepage</a></li>
    <li><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
    <li><a href="/account">Account</a></li>
  </ul>

Further customizations require a custom Builder (see below).

Restricting set_tab scope

The set_tab method understands all options you are used to pass to a Rails controller filter. In fact, behind the scenes this method uses a before_filter to store the tab in the @tab_stack variable.

Taking advantage of Rails filter options, you can restrict a tab to a selected group of actions in the same controller.

  class PostsController < ApplicationController
    set_tab :admin
    set_tab :posts, :only => %w(index show)
  end

  class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
    set_tab :admin, :if => :admin_controller?

    def admin_controller?
      self.class.name =~ /^Admin(::|Controller)/
    end
  end

Using Namespaces to create Multiple Tabs

Namespaces enable you to create and manage tabs in parallels. The best way to demonstrate namespace usage is with an example.

Let’s assume your application provides a first level navigation menu with 3 elements: :home, :dashboard, :projects. The relationship between your tabs and your controllers is 1:1 so you should end up with the following source code.

  class HomeController
    set_tab :home
  end

  class DashboardController
    set_tab :dashboard
  end

  class ProjectsController
    set_tab :projects

    def first; end
    def second; end
    def third; end
  end

The project controller contains 3 actions and you might want to create a second-level navigation menu. This menu should reflect the navigation status of the user in the project page.

Without namespaces, you wouldn’t be able to accomplish this task because you already set the current tab value to :projects. You need to create a parallel navigation menu and uniquely identify it with a custom namespace. Let’s call it :navigation.

  class ProjectsController
    set_tab :projects

    # Create an other tab navigation level
    set_tab :first, :navigation, :only => %w(first)
    set_tab :second, :navigation, :only => %w(second)
    set_tab :third, :navigation, :only => %w(third)

    def first; end
    def second; end
    def third; end
  end

Voilà! That’s all you need to do. And you can create an unlimited number of namespaces as long as you use an unique name to identify them.

The default namespace is called :default. Passing :default as name is the same as don’t using any namespace at all. The following lines are equivalent.

  set_tab :projects
  set_tab :projects, :default

Rendering Tabs with Namespaces

To switch namespace in your template, just pass the :namespace option to the tabs_tag helper method.

  <% tabs_tag do |tab| %>
    <%= tab.home      'Homepage', root_path %>
    <%= tab.dashboard 'Dashboard', dashboard_path %>
    <%= tab.projects  'Projects', projects_path %>
  <% end %>

  <% tabs_tag :namespace => :navigation do |tab| %>
    <%= tab.first   'First', first_project_path %>
    <%= tab.second  'Second', second_project_path %>
    <%= tab.third   'Account', third_project_path %>
  <% end %>

Namespace scope

As a bonus feature, the namespace needs to be unique within current request scope, not necessarily across the entire application.

Back to the previous example, you can reuse the same namespace in the other controllers. In this way, you can reuse your templates as well.

  class HomeController
    set_tab :home
  end

  class DashboardController
    set_tab :dashboard

    set_tab :index,  :navigation, :only => %w(index)
    set_tab :common, :navigation, :only => %w(foo bar)

    # ...
  end

  class ProjectsController
    set_tab :projects

    set_tab :first,  :navigation, :only => %w(first)
    set_tab :second, :navigation, :only => %w(second)
    set_tab :third,  :navigation, :only => %w(third)

    # ...
  end

Tab Builders

The Builder is responsible for creating the tabs HTML code. This library is bundled with two Builders:

Understanding the Builder

Builders act as formatters. A Builder encapsulates all the logic behind the tab creation including the code required to toggle tabs status.

When the tabs_tag helper is called, it creates a new Tabs instance with selected Builder. If you don’t provide a custom builder, then Tabs::TabsBuilder is used by default.

Creating a custom Builder

All builders must extend the base Tabs::Builder class and implement at least the tab_for method. Additional overridable methods include:

The following example creates a custom tab builder called MenuTabBuilder.

  class MenuTabBuilder < TabsOnRails::Tabs::Builder
    def tab_for(tab, name, options, item_options = {})
      item_options[:class] = (current_tab?(tab) ? 'active' : '')
      @context.content_tag(:li, item_options) do
        @context.link_to(name, options)
      end
    end
  end

Using a custom Builder

In your view, simply pass the builder class to the tabs_tag method.

  <% tabs_tag(:builder => MenuTabBuilder) do |tab| %>
    <%= tab.home        'Homepage', root_path %>
    <%= tab.dashboard,  'Dashboard', dashboard_path %>
    <%= tab.account     'Account', account_path, :style => 'float: right;' %>
  <% end %>

This is the final result.

  <ul>
    <li class=""><a href="/">Homepage</a></li>
    <li class="active"><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
    <li class="" style="float: right;"><a href="/account">Account</a></li>
  </ul>

Documentation

The library is still under development and this README file might not be contain the latest changes. For the full documentation, development roadmap and more information please visit the project page.

Author

• Simone Carletti <weppos@weppos.net>

Resources

• Homepage
• Source
• Bugs & Features

License

Copyright © 2009 Simone Carletti, TabsOnRails is released under the MIT license.