Viewaide contains a set of view helpers made to standardize basic HTML structures and provide simple Blueprint CSS integration.
Viewaide is a gem and should be declared in your config/environment.rb.
config.gem "viewaide"Viewaide has a handful of helpers for things like recordsets and zebra rows (<table>s and <tr>s), columns (<div class="span-#">), fieldsets, sets (for input elements), and more.
For a full overview of what the library does, head to the documentation. Here’s a brief overview.
# layouts/admin.html.erb
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title><%= application_name %></title>
<%= stylesheet_link_tag *%w(screen my-screen) %>
<!--[if lt IE 8]>
<%= stylesheet_link_tag "ie" %>
<![endif]-->
<%= yield :head %>
</head>
<% body :admin do %>
<% container do %>
<% column :header do %>
<h1><%= link_to "#{application_name} - Admin", admin_root_path %></h1>
<%= render :partial => "layouts/admin_navigation" %>
<% end %>
<% column do %>
<%= messages(flash) %>
<h2><%= yield :page_title %></h2>
<%= yield %>
<% end %>
<%= render :partial => "layouts/footer" %>
<% end %>
<%= yield :footer %>
</body>
</html>
# admin/users/index.html.erb
<% body :additional_class %>
<% column :three_fourths, :content do %>
<% recordset do %>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Email Address</th>
<th>Confirmed At</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<% @users.each do |user| %>
<% zebra_row do %>
<td><%= user.name %></td>
<td><%= link_to_email user.email %></td>
<td><%= datetime user.confirmed_at, "Unconfirmed" %></td>
<% end %>
<% end %>
</tbody>
<% end %>
<% end %>
<% column :one_fourth, :last do %>
<%= link_button "Create New User", new_admin_user_path %>
<% form_for :user, :url => admin_users_path, :action => :get do |form| %>
<% fieldset "Search" do %>
<% set do %>
<%= form.label :search %>
<%= form.text_field :search %>
<% end %>
<% end %>
<% fieldset "Filter" do %>
<% set :select do %>
<%= form.label :filter %>
<%= form.select :filter, filter_options_for_users %>
<% end %>
<% end %>
<%= submit_button "Filter" %>
<% end %>
<% end %>Most of the helpers (body, container, column, fieldset, set, submit_button, and recordset) support some sort of splat arguments and a hash; that is, they take a handful of classes and a hash of additional attributes.
# at the top of a view
<% body :admin, "another-class", :id => "body-id" %>This helper would attach the admin and another-class classes, as well as an id of ‘body-id’, to the <body> element (if the body helper is used in the layout). This convention allows developers to quickly and easily assign multiple classes without worry of duplication to the HTML structures generated.
Fork the project, write (failing) tests, write code to get the tests to pass, rake to ensure the entire suite passes, and commit. Send me a pull request once everything is working. Do not touch Rakefile or version of the project. If you write code without tests, I’m not going to accept it.
Copyright © 2009 Josh Clayton, released under the MIT license