[Radiant] custom controllers displaying a page from radiant
orff
proudestmonkey at gmail.com
Fri Oct 13 09:29:07 CDT 2006
You are correct. I would like a simple way to display radiant pages, but
also a simple way to run my own rials code without having to bother with
coding up a behavior. Coming into this project what I really wanted was a
simple CMS for my users to put in content, but still leverage my rails
knowledge to create functionality for the site. I already know how to get
forms, email, calendars, etc. working in rails. I love the way the
behaviors extend radiant and I think they are great for giving a 'non-coder'
type admin a way to add functionality, but I think there are also going to
be a lot of admins who already know rails and are going to be a bit
frustrated having to learn the radiant codebase just to add simple
functionality to their radiant driven site (also debugging behaviors is slow
due to server restarts).
What id like to do is call my controller directly using routes (or default
routes), then render the page by calling radiant classes / methods. The
radiant page dispatcher would not even come into play until after the custom
controller runs (if I understand you correctly).
In other words URL ://mysite.com/contact
would call the radiant page controller and render the page, but
//mysite/forms/contact
would call my forms controller and render the page using the radiant layout
of choice and then render and forms I decide in my controller by passing in
partial(s).
//mysite/forms/contact_create
would use my rails code to create the contact entry in the model, then could
redirect back to a radiant page
with the confirmation details
my forms controller would handle the interaction with the models, do the
validation, etc. In my perfect world, all I need from the radiant code is
way to display a page with a custom partial, see the contact_create method
below:
class FormsController < ApplicationController
def index
contact_new
end
def contact_new
@page = Page.find_by_url ('contact/form_holder_page') # this is a
hidden radiant page ??
custom_content = render_partial ('contact_form') # this form has a
placeholder to display validation errors
@page.render_with_custom_page_part( :page_part => custom_content ) #
this would be brilliant!! :-)
end
def contact_create
@contact = Contact.new( params[:contact] )
if @contact.save
flash[:notice] = 'Contact info info saved.'
redirect_to '/contact/thanks'
else
flash[:error] = 'Contact info could not be saved.'
render :action => 'contact_new'
end
end
end
thanks for the swift reply. I am on vacation next week, but then I look
forward to installing and checking out the corex branch, I like where it is
going ..
Mr out of the box, Mike
On 10/12/06, Alexander Horn <alex.horn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > def index
> > @page = Page.find (1)
> > custom_content = render_partial 'some_partial'
> > @page.page_parts << PagePart.new( :name=>'form',
> > :content=>custom_content )
> > process_page # this is the part I really cant remember, it was
> three
> > lines or so of code
> > end
>
> If I understand correctly you are trying to decompose your "behavior"
> into a model, and a controller. I like the fact that you are thinking
> outside the box. You are right. Certain things could be done more
> easily in a controller.
>
> As part of the "corex" branch, I have done a few experiments of
> similar kinds: the goal is to create a separation of model and
> controller logic.
>
> Here are couple observations I have made:
>
> A hypothetical SiteController#process_page() method may look so:
>
> class SiteController < ApplicationController
> ...
>
> def process_page
> if @page.layout
> content_type = @page.layout.content_type.to_s.strip
> @response.headers['Content-Type'] = content_type unless
> content_type.empty?
> end
> headers.each { |k,v| @response.headers[k] = v }
> @response.body = render
> end
> ...
> end
>
> It seems the biggest challenge with this approach is the coordination
> of the dispatcher process. Consider a situation where someone would
> like to overwrite this process_page() method in a subclass.
>
> Example:
>
> class MySiteController < SiteController
> def process_page
> ...
> super
> end
> end
>
> Now how does this MySiteController get called. Clearly we must first
> find the page by the given url [ find_page_by_url() ] before we can
> make the decision what controller would be appropriate to handle the
> page request. That's a problem I am facing. I am not quite sure how to
> solve the issue of finding the page (which is a model) and directing
> the program flow to the controller (i.e. SiteController or a subclass
> thereof).
>
> Clearly, it would be beneficial to be able to write your own
> controller. However, how does the dispatcher know which controller
> goes with what page? .... I am still contemplating on this....
>
> --
> Alexander Horn
> http://www2.truman.edu/~ah428
>
>
>
> On 10/12/06, orff <proudestmonkey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would love to just be able to call methods in my own custom controller
> to
> > display the CMS content, but do things like form handling / database
> > interaction using rails proper and not have to write behaviors to add
> > functionality. I have successfully written my own behavior based off of
> the
> > mailer behavior to submit form data to a model, but the whole time what
> I
> > really wanted to do was just display a certian page from the CMS with my
> own
> > forms / validation / etc happening as rails code.
> >
> > I played around with a new controller on my dev version calling render
> with
> > an injected page part, but could not get it to work without committing
> the
> > page part to the database first. I have since deleted it, but the code
> was
> > similar to this (sorry, I dont have the exact code, but I think you can
> get
> > the idea)
> >
> > def index
> > @page = Page.find (1)
> > custom_content = render_partial 'some_partial'
> > @page.page_parts << PagePart.new( :name=>'form',
> > :content=>custom_content )
> > process_page # this is the part I really cant remember, it was
> three
> > lines or so of code
> > end
> >
> > Is there anyone from the development team that could give me a hint as
> to
> > how to do this, or convince me that custom controllers are a really bad
> idea
> > and I should just write behaviors ? I understand fully there are lots
> of
> > things that can do wrong with modifying the page real-time, but it would
> be
> > nice to just do my forms in rails with validations, activerecord
> > relationships, etc. etc.
> >
> > Debugging behaviors is a real pain because I keep having to re-start my
> web
> > server to see new results (even in development mode). Maybe if someone
> can
> > tell me how to fix just this problem I'd be a little more happy to write
> > behaviors.
> >
> > -mike
> >
> >
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