Refinery CMS

Chapters

1. Take a Second Look
2. Enabling Custom View Templates
   • Set Initializers
   • Create Template
   • Set Back-End Select
3. Enabling Custom Layout Templates
4. When Not to Use Custom View Templates
   • Use a Decorator to Add the Collection to Pages#show
   • Modify the ApplicationController
   • Create a Custom Action

1 Take a Second Look

When developing a site, you might stumble into an issue where you need to change the structure of the output page to accommodate a different look or a necessary DOM modification that cannot be achieved through the reordering of page parts. In these cases, it is nice to be able to quickly draft a second template and swap.

Refinery utilises a separate view file for the home page (refinery/pages/home.html.erb). In all other circumstances, by default, Refinery uses the show action of the Refinery::PagesController to render page content. That means overriding and editing refinery/pages/show.html.erb to change the structure. By default, that template is largely blank—it contains a reference to the refinery/_content_page partial, which utilises a complex series of classes beginning with the ContentPagePresenter.

This is rather advanced magic, and in some circumstances, this automatic rendering does not serve well — or we might need to wrap content inside an element. In this case, when we are customizing the rendering of only the page, not the header or footer or actual site layout, it is appropriate to enable Refinery’s custom view templates.

Likewise, on some pages, we might prefer to wrap the content of a page inside a different layout, one where the header, footer, or other sections are laid out differently. In this case, it’s appropropriate to enable Refinery’s custom layout templates.

2 Enabling Custom View Templates

This is a straightforward process that enhances Refinery’s capabilities greatly.

2.1 Set Initializers

Open config/initializers/refinery/pages.rb.

• Change config.use_view_templates to true;
• Change config.view_template_whitelist to an array containing either string or symbol representations of your new view’s filename (i.e. if you will create a new view called about_us.html.erb, set this whitelist to [:about_us]). In order for a view template to be displayed in the back-end, it must be present in the whitelist. When you select an option in the back-end corresponding to one of these whitelisted templates, it hands the name of the template to render.

2.2 Create Template

Create app/views/refinery/pages/about_us.html.erb, where about_us is the name of the file you whitelisted.

• Inside of this file, you can either render '/refinery/content_page', or you can use @page.content_for(:body) to output the content of a specific page part. NB: Content is not marked as safe by default. To mark it as safe, use: raw(@page.content_for(:body))

2.3 Set Back-End Select

Then, when editing your page, you should see an option to change the template in the Advanced Options section.

3 Enabling Custom Layout Templates

This is nearly identical to enabling View Templates, with the following caveats:

• The configuration variables are named config.use_layout_templates and config.layout_template_whitelist, respectively;
• When you set a custom layout in the back-end, it passes the template’s title to render :layout;
• You should create your new layout inside of app/views/layouts/, not g/app/views/refinery/pages/.

4 When Not to Use Custom View Templates

Do not use your view template to instantiate collections (i.e. <% events = Refinery::Events::Event.all %>). This is a violation of MVC convention, and in certain circumstances, can cause major issues (such as when your Senior Programmer begins to pummel you with her fists). If you need to make new collections or objects available to your view templates, you have three options before you:

4.1 Use a Decorator to Add the Collection to Pages#show

Assuming we need access to a collection of events, create /app/decorators/controllers/refinery/pages/pages_controller_decorator.rb containing the following:

Refinery::PagesController.class_eval do
  before_filter :fetch_events, :only => [:show]

  def fetch_events
    @events = ::Refinery::Events::Event.all
  end
  protected :fetch_events
end

You can also entirely override the show method inside this decorator, too, if need be. You can view the existing method here for reference.

This method has the advantage of constraining the find to occur only on pages that are not the home page (and not, for example, on any engine pages). There are two major downsides, though:

1. If you override only the show method and not the preview method, you will break the preview method since it will not be able to find your collection;
2. It will still perform the find on many other pages, which is not well-contained and has implications for performance.

4.2 Modify the ApplicationController

You can modify the ApplicationController in your host app to run a before filter, but this is even less efficient than the above-listed method. It is, however, the simplest method.

4.3 Create a Custom Action

This is actually relatively straightforward with one single exception. Basically, use a decorator to create an additional method on the PagesController:

# /app/decorators/controllers/refinery/pages/pages_controller_decorator.rb
Refinery::PagesController.class_eval do
  skip_before_filter :find_page, :only => [:about_us]
  def about_us
    @page = ::Refinery::Page.where(:link_url => '/about-us').first || error_404
    @events = ::Refinery::Events::Event.all
    render_with_templates?
  end
end

page at any point, since link_url is volatile.

You will also need to add a route to this method, or else the page will remain unaccessible. On the very first line of config/routes.rb, before anything else, add the following:

Refinery::Core::Engine.routes.prepend do
  get '/about-us', :to => 'pages#about_us', :as => :about_us
end

# Your route file resumes here

Then this will use the app/views/refinery/pages/about_us.html.erb template by default.

There is one huge advantage to this method: the additional find is well-constrained to just a single page. There are, however, two downsides:

1. This removes some of the flexibility afforded to you by Refinery, since you must be able to locate the Refinery::Page entry for the method to work;
2. This requires you to prepend to routes, which is not a common idiom in Rails, and might be confusing to newcomers if you do not document properly.

When possible, you should prefer either of the two previous methods, but this last method is made available for completeness.