Rails engine for static pages.
... but be careful. Danger!
Yeah, like "About us", "Directions", marketing pages, etc.
$ gem install high_voltage
Include in your Gemfile:
gem "high_voltage"
For Rails versions prior to 3.0, use the rails2 branch of high_voltage: https://github.com/thoughtbot/high_voltage/tree/rails2
Write your static pages and put them in the RAILS_ROOT/app/views/pages directory.
$ mkdir app/views/pages
$ touch app/views/pages/about.html.erb
After putting something interesting there, you can link to it from anywhere in your app with:
link_to "About", page_path("about")
This will also work, if you like the more explicit style:
link_to "About", page_path(:id => "about")
You can nest pages in a directory structure, if that makes sense from a URL perspective for you:
link_to "Q4 Reports", page_path("about/corporate/policies/HR/en_US/biz/sales/Quarter-Four")
Bam.
By default, the static page routes will be like /pages/:id (where :id is the view filename).
If you want to route to a static page in another location (for example, a homepage), do this:
match 'pages/home' => 'high_voltage/pages#show', :id => 'home'
In that case, you'd need an app/views/pages/home.html.erb file.
Generally speaking, you need to route to the 'show' action with an :id param of the view filename.
You can route the root url to a high voltage page like this:
root :to => 'high_voltage/pages#show', :id => 'home'
Which will render a homepage from app/views/pages/home.html.erb
Most common reasons to override?
- You need authentication around the pages to make sure a user is signed in.
- You need to render different layouts for different pages.
Create a PagesController of your own:
$ rails generate controller pages
Override the default route:
# in config/routes.rb
resources :pages
Then modify it to subclass from High Voltage, adding whatever you need:
class PagesController < HighVoltage::PagesController
before_filter :authenticate
layout :layout_for_page
protected
def layout_for_page
case params[:id]
when 'home'
'home'
else
'application'
end
end
end
Just a suggestion, but you can test your pages using Shoulda pretty easily:
class PagesControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
tests PagesController
%w(earn_money screencast about contact).each do |page|
context "on GET to /pages/#{page}" do
setup { get :show, :id => page }
should_respond_with :success
should_render_template page
end
end
end
If you're not using a custom PagesController be sure to test HighVoltage::PagesController instead.
Enjoy!
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Thank you to all the contributors!
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High Voltage is Copyright © 2009-2011 thoughtbot. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the MIT-LICENSE file.