# General Question

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/general-question/90412>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [March 28, 2007, 3:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/general-question/90412 "2007-03-28T15:28:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/walterdavis)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2007, 3:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/general-question/90412/1 "2007-03-28T15:28:57Z")

</div>

I posted a question yesterday about the Mailer extension, and it occurs  
to me that it might have come off too “needy”. I am just starting with  
Rails and Ruby, and stumbled across Radiant, which can already do about  
80% of what I need “out of the box”. Could someone tell me, in general  
terms, if I will need to learn to fully develop in Rails before I can  
do things like validate a form submission within Radiant? Does being  
able to create an extension equate with being able to create a Rails  
app? Or will I be able to skate along without coming all the way up  
that learning curve, and learn as I have always done, by picking apart  
other people’s solutions and modifying them to my needs?

Thanks!

Walter

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/walterdavis)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2007, 4:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/general-question/90412/2 "2007-03-28T16:30:06Z")

</div>

hi All.

longtime lurker, first time caller…

I am finding Keith Bingham’s asset foo to be dealing with images  
admirably, but not other content\_types, I see code to handle it, so I  
dive in…

At this point confusion sets in, so I thought I’d ask what the plan was  
for non image content\_types, as some supporting code appears to be  
there… (ported from mephisto?)

Any pointers as to the right direction to proceed would be very much  
appreciated.

cheers,

–  
doug lang tel: +44 (1273) 808949  
\*nix sysadmin [http://www.netdotnet.net/](http://www.netdotnet.net/)  
technical consultant [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/walterdavis)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2007, 4:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/general-question/90412/3 "2007-03-28T16:33:06Z")

</div>

Walter Lee D. wrote:

> I posted a question yesterday about the Mailer extension, and it occurs  
> to me that it might have come off too “needy”. I am just starting with  
> Rails and Ruby, and stumbled across Radiant, which can already do about  
> 80% of what I need “out of the box”. Could someone tell me, in general  
> terms, if I will need to learn to fully develop in Rails before I can  
> do things like validate a form submission within Radiant? Does being  
> able to create an extension equate with being able to create a Rails  
> app? Or will I be able to skate along without coming all the way up  
> that learning curve, and learn as I have always done, by picking apart  
> other people’s solutions and modifying them to my needs?

Learning Rails would definitely help you understand how Radiant works,  
but Radiant does a number of things on it’s own that aren’t particularly  
Railsish. Creating your own extensions would definitely help you get the  
hang of Radiant, but unfortunately documentation is a bit thin right now  
so you will probably need to resort to reading the source code more  
often than not. Studying the way other extensions are written will also  
help.

Sorry not to answer your other question right away. In general if you  
want a form in Radiant that displays error messages you need to create a  
number of tags for displaying error messages.

Here’s an example from a small plugin I wrote for the Ruby Lang Web site  
to simplify subscribing to the Ruby-Mailing lists:

\<r:subscribe\>  
\<r:unless\_success\>  
Mailing-lists are a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of  
the Ruby community.

```
 <r:form id="subscriptions-form">
   <h2>Subscribe or Unsubscribe</h2>

   <r:if_error><p class="error"><r:error_message /></p></r:if_error>

   <p>
     Mailing List: <r:list_select /><br />
     First Name: <r:first_name_input /><br />
     Last Name: <r:last_name_input /><br />
     E-mail Address: <r:email_input /><br />
     Action: <r:action_select />
   </p>
   <div class="buttons">
     <input class="button" type="submit" value="Submit Form" />
   </div>
 </r:form>

```

\</r:unless\_success\>

\<r:if\_success\>

## Confirmation E-mail
  

You should receive a confirmation message within a few minutes.  
Once you have received the message, follow the instructions it  
contains to complete the process.

  

\<r:link\>Subscribe to another mailing list…\</r:link\>

  
\</r:if\_success\>  
\</r:subscribe\>

You can see this in action here:

[http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/community/mailing-lists/](http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/community/mailing-lists/)

In a nutshell the form tag on the Subscribe page submits to the current  
URL. The Subscribe page then has a chance to process the request. It  
checks for a post and if it’s a post it processes the request. If there  
are no errors it sets success to true and the part in the \<r:if\_success\>  
tags renders. If it can’t process the form because their are errors it  
sets the error message and that will be displayed above the form.

Extremely messy, I know, especially by Rails standards, but this is the  
cleanest implementation I could come up with that worked with tags.

I’ve attached the complete Behavior for your perusal that was designed  
to work with 0.5.2. It works slightly differently on mental and the 0.6  
release candidates because behaviors have been merged with the Page  
class, but this is the general idea.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/walterdavis)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2007, 4:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/general-question/90412/4 "2007-03-28T16:45:09Z")

</div>

On Mar 28, 2007, at 10:32 AM, John W. Long wrote:

> It checks for a post and if it’s a post it processes the request. If  
> there are no errors it sets success to true and the part in the  
> \<r:if\_success\> tags renders

Exactly what I was trying to do with Mailer. I see, I will need to get  
my nails dirty and write additional code. Not terrifying, and you have  
given me an enormous leg up.

Thanks!

Walter

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/walterdavis)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2007, 4:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/general-question/90412/5 "2007-03-28T16:47:09Z")

</div>

I am working on this as we speak. I was in Mexico for a few weeks and  
lost track of this, but in the last few days I have gotten back to  
it. I have added pagination and tagging (for images, but articles  
aren’t far behind) and am working on other data types soon. Really  
the only problem is a thumbnail, I should just make a generic “non-  
image” thumbnail and build the rest when I have time. I have also  
switched this from acts\_as\_attachment to attachment\_foo and now  
mini\_magick is also supported.

And yes, lot’s of the code is stolen from Mephisto.

I should have a version usable by other people in the next few days.  
The svn repository will also be changing, as I have a new host.

If you are impatient, in the model by acts\_as\_taggable, it limits the  
asset type to “image”. Change this and do something in the views to  
call a generic icon and it will work…

Keith B.  
Tel: +49-7731-79838380  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@walterdavis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/walterdavis)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2007, 5:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/general-question/90412/6 "2007-03-28T17:07:15Z")

</div>

Keith B. wrote:

> I should have a version usable by other people in the next few days.  
> The svn repository will also be changing, as I have a new host.

rocking good news! will keep an eye on it all

> If you are impatient, in the model by acts\_as\_taggable, it limits the  
> asset type to “image”. Change this and do something in the views to  
> call a generic icon and it will work…

heh, am looking at it now… cheers for swiftresponse…

big thanks to all really, radiant++

cheers,

–  
doug lang tel: +44 (1273) 808949  
\*nix sysadmin [http://www.netdotnet.net/](http://www.netdotnet.net/)  
technical consultant [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)