MrWizard

MrWizard makes it easy to create wizards for your Rails app. It provides the base classes for your wizard's controller and steps, and a generator that you can use to easily generate the files needed for your wizard.

Usage

./script/generate mr_wizard contact personal_info survey message

That will generate:

• ContactController
• personal_info, survey, and message steps under app/controllers/contact along with a common base step.
• A show view for the wizard and a partial for each step under app/views/contact
• Specs under spec/controllers/contact for each step
• Specs for the views under spec/views/contact

You will want to edit each step's definition and view to tailor it for your application. You may also need to edit the base class for each step too.

Controller

The generated controller will have a structure similar to:

class ContactController < ApplicationController
  mr_wizard :url => :contact_path, :steps => [
    :personal_info,
    :survey,
    :message
  ]
end

You may add whatever filters and such that you want. mr_wizard defines the show and create actions which handle requests by passing them off to the controller's generated wizard class.

Steps

The generated steps are not controllers. They derive from the generated base step which is a subclass of MrWizard::Step. They'll typically look like:

class Contact::PersonalInfoStep < Contact::Step
  def needed?
    # return false if you want to skip this step
    true
  end
    
  def show
    # setup any objects needed to show the step
    # the rendering will be handled by the wizard's controller
  end

  def update
    # return false if the update fails and the step needs to be redisplayed
    true
  end
end

The Contact::Step superclass is shared with each step of the Contact wizard. It provides a convinient location to define accessors and other shared methods.

Routing

MrWizard provides a routing helper that simplifies creating named routes for your wizard. In config/routes.rb you just need to add a line such as:

map.wizard map, :contact, :controller => 'contact'

Warning! Take note of the first argument. You have to pass it the routing mapper to ensure prior options are maintained such as when you nest a wizard under a resource.

Sites

• MrWizard
• SemanticGap
• Rails

Legal

Copyright (c) 2009 SemanticGap(R), released under the MIT license

SemanticGap(R) is a registered service mark of Nolan Eakins. All rights reserved.