Comfortable Mexican Sofa¶ ↑

ComfortableMexicanSofa is a CMS engine that provides CMS functionality to any Rails app. It is not intended for users that would put <% ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(‘DROP DATABASE;’) %> as content of a page.

Install¶ ↑

From local gem:

rake manifest && rake install

In your Rails project:

# config/environment.rb
config.gem 'comfortable_mexican_sofa'

Run the follwing in your console to generate migrations and update your database:

script/generate cms
rake db:migrate

Navigate to the following address to access CMS admin page:

http://your_application/cms-admin

Sample CMS Configuration¶ ↑

ComfortableMexicanSofa.config do |config|
  config.http_auth_username = 'username'
  config.http_auth_password = 'secret_password'
end

Setting Up Layouts and Writing CMS Content¶ ↑

Here’s some available type of tags that allow construction and insertion of page content:

cms_page_block  - block that gets rendered in the actual content of the page
cms_block       - block that is not automatically rendered
cms_snippet     - it's a snippet, a small reusable piece you can put around your site. not tied to a page.
cms_helper      - it's a helper method of some sort, ill-defined at this point.
cms_partial     - renders a Rails partial into the page.

Layouts define the input fields a user will see when editing a page that uses that template. For example, your primary layout uses the ‘application’ Rails layout and has as content:

{{cms_block:meta_title:string}} {{cms_page_block:main_content:code}} {{cms_block:date_stamp:date}}

This will give you a single-line text field, a text area, and a date field with day/month/year. Only the main_content will be rendered to the page. You can use cms_block’s to add attributes to pages that aren’t necessarily rendered into the final output.

Here are the different formats for page blocks and what they will generate in the CMS page editing form:

string    - a single-line text input
text      - a textarea
datetime  - a date field
rich_text - if TinyMCE is installed in the app, this will generate a TinyMCE enhanced textarea
code      - if CodeMirror is installed in the app, this will generate a CodeMirror editor with syntax highlighting for HTML, JavaScript and CSS

Layout inheritance¶ ↑

There must be at least one layout. Layouts can inherit input fields from their parents. If the parent layout defines one textarea and its child defines a timestamp field, then a page that uses the child layout will have two input fields - the textare and the timestamp.

However, the layouts DO NOT nest their Rails layouts. The child Rails layout will not be nested inside the parent Rails layout. Also, both layouts can use the SAME Rails layout, if you wish.

Snippets¶ ↑

Once you have a bunch of snippets defined, you can render them into your layouts however you’d like. In your Rails layouts, put in : CmsSnippet.content_for(‘the-slug-of-the-snippet’)

Installing CodeMirror Support¶ ↑

Download CodeMirror from: marijn.haverbeke.nl/codemirror

To get CodeMirror support properly working, you need to place the CodeMirror files in specific folders in your app. The JavaScript initializer expects the CodeMirror .js files to be at /public/javascripts/codemirrror/ and the CSS files at /public/stylesheets/codemirror/.

To properly generate the .sass files, use the following command:

css2sass -a file.css > file.sass

Adding Categorization Support for Plugins¶ ↑

1. Add acts_as_categorized to the model definition

# app/models/cms_model_name.rb
class CmsModelName < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_categorized
  # The rest of the actual model definition goes here
end

1. Create the join model

# app/models/cms_model_name_categorizations.rb
class CmsModelNameCategorization < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_categorization
end

1. Modify the migration generator

# generators/cms_plugin_name/migrations/create_cms_plugin_name.rb
class CreateCmsPluginName < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    # migrations ups for actual plugin go here

    create_table :cms_model_name_categorizations do |t|
      t.integer :cms_category_id
      t.integer :cms_model_name_id
      t.timestamps
    end
    add_index :cms_model_name_categorizations, [:cms_category_id, :cms_attachment_id], :unique => true,
      :name => 'index_model_name_cats_on_cat_id_and_model_name_id'
  end

  def self.down
    # migration downs for actual plugin go here
    drop_table :cms_model_name_categorizations
  end
end

1. Add a module to update CmsCategory to connect it to your plugin

# lib/add_to_category.rb
# makes sure this is required either in init.rb or somewhere else in lib
module AddToCategory
  module InstanceMethods
    def apply_model_name_methods
      has_many :cms_model_name_categorizations
      has_many :cms_model_names, :through => :cms_model_name_categorizations
    end
  end
end

CmsCategory.extend(AddToCategory::InstanceMethods)
CmsCategory.apply_mode_name_methods

1. Add css/sass for the category show view

/ generators/cms_plugin_name/templates/stylesheets/cms_plugin_name.sass
#cms_admin_categories_show
  h3
  .model_name
    margin-bottom: 15px
    overflow: hidden
  a.model_name
    width: 150px
    float: left
    height: 30px
    padding-left: 35px
    font: 14px/30px Georgia, serif
    color: #000
    margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px
    background: url(/images/cms/icon_model_name.gif) left center no-repeat

1. Add subform for inline category editing

# views/cms_admin/controller_name/_form.html.haml
= render :partial => 'cms_admin/categories/category_subform', :locals => { :item => @cms_page }