Hi,
since the old inplace_editor plugin is pretty outdated, I decided to
write a
new one that uses a REST api and works seamlessly with RESTful rails
controllers. Its main advantage is that you don’t need ANY special
serverside
code for this to work and any custom workflows in your controllers
(authentication etc. ) apply to the inplace editor automatically.
This is my first Javascript Project, my first jQuery Project and my
first Rails
plugin, so I’d be interested in comments and/or suggestions for
improvement.
REST in Place
_______
/ \
| R.I.P.|
| |
| |
-------------
“REST in Place” is an AJAX Inplace-Editor that talks to RESTful
controllers.
It requires absolutely no additional server-side code if your
controller
fulfills the following REST preconditions:
- It uses the HTTP PUT method to update a record
- It delivers an object in XML form for requests with
“Accept: application/xml” headers
The editor works by PUTting the updated value to the server and
GETting the
updated record afterwards to display the updated value.
That way any authentication methods or otherwise funky workflows in
your
controllers are used for the inplace-editors requests.
URL: http://svn.varwig.org/rails/plugins/rest_in_place/
BLOG: http://jan.varwig.org/
Instructions
REST in Place needs the jQuery library to work.
Install REST in Place with
script/plugin install
http://svn.varwig.org/rails/plugins/rest_in_place/
To make a piece of Text inplace-editable, wrap it into an element (a
span
usually) with class “rest_in_place”. The editor needs 3 pieces of
information
to work: a URL, an object name and the attribute name. These are
provided as
follows:
-
put attributes into the element, like this:
<span class="rest_in_place" url="/users/1" object="user"
attribute=“name”>
Johnny
-
if any of these attributes is missing, DOM parents of the elemet
are searched
for them. That means you can write something like:<div object="user" url="/users/1"> Name: <span class="rest_in_place" attribute="name" >Johnny</
span>
eMail: [email protected]
-
You can completely omit the url, the current documents url is
taken then.
With proper RESTful controllers this should always work, the url-
attribute
is for cases when you want to edit a resource that is displayed as
part of
a non-RESTful webpage. -
Rails provides the dom_id helper that constructs a dom id out of
an
ActiveRecord for you. So, your HTML page may look like this:<div id="user_1"> Name: <span class="rest_in_place" attribute="name" >Johnny</
span>
eMail: [email protected]
REST in Place recognizes dom_ids of this form and derives the object
parameter
from them, so that (with the current documents url used) you really
only need
to provide the attributes name in most cases.
!! --------
!! Note that a manually defined (in the element or in one of the
parents)
!! object always overrides dom_id recognition.
!! --------
Example
Your routes.rb:
map.resources :users
Your app/controllers/users_controller.rb:
class UsersController < ApplicationController
def show
@user = User.find params[:id]
respond_to do |type|
type.html
type.xml {render :xml => @user.to_xml}
end
end
def update
@user = User.find params[:id]
@user.update_attributes!(params[:user])
redirect_to @user, :status => :see_other
end
end
Your app/views/users/show.html.erb:
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/javascripts/
jquery-1.2.1.js" charset=“utf-8”>
ID: <%= @user.id %>
Name: <%=
@user.name %>
Why jQuery?
Why did I write this with jQuery instead of Prototype?
Frankly I never even worked with prototype and have just recently
gotten into
Javascript using jQuery. jQuery seems superior to Protoype and will
hopefully
replace Prototye someday or at least get [integrated into Rails]
jRails as nicely as
Prototype so people can chose which framework they want to use.
Also, REST in Place at this stage is primarily a proof of concept.
Non-Rails
REST in Place was written for Ruby on Rails but is usable with any
kind of
RESTful web api. Just include the rest_in_place.js in your webpage and
follow
the instructions.
Copyright (c) 2007 [Jan Varwig], released under the MIT license