[Radiant] doing forms -- thinking way outside the box..

[Jacob Burkhart]

Looks pretty spiffy mike.

I would be interested in getting ahold of your code.  I was planning
on doing the same thing, for Kupenda.  (currently
http://www.kupenda.org/ and http://kupenda.jotapajaro.com/)

that is:

Having a Radiant site for the CMS and content

Having a seperate Ruby on Rails sponsorship site for managing users
(with forms, and more...)

I was going to go with the low-tech/hard-coding of sharing a design
and linking between them...  but if you've got something good for me
to start from, I'd love to take a look at your code.


thanks,
Jacob

On 4/6/07, orff <proudestmonkey at gmail.com> wrote:
> (continued - hit tab enter ;-)
>
> 1) We needed to launch our new website lighthouse.org
> 2) We needed complicated forms:
>   - donations forwarding to payflow link
>   - location based search, google maps integration
>   - GOOD AR validations, I love rails validation and didnt want to have to
> write a rediant behavior.
>
> What I really wanted was radiant for the 'static' content and uninhibited
> rails for the forms and apps.  This allows me to do anything I want for
> forms, searches, etc.
>
> Here is our solution in a nutshell -- 2 environments:
> 1) radiant with a snippet for the other environments url  ( lighthouse.org )
> 2) rails with some custom code to render pages from the other environment (
> forms.lighthouse.org)
>
> To see a demo, go to the site and click 'Help Near You' or 'Donate', then
> 'Donate Online'
>
> If anyone is interested in the source code, I will happily share it. I am
> not sure how well this could translate into a gem or a plugin though since
> it is essentially a standalone app.
>
> Here is a snippet of a controller in the forms server environment, so you
> can see how easy it is for us to create forms now and still use radiant for
> the layout:
>
> class DonateController < ApplicationController
>
>     def index
>         redirect_to :action => 'new'
>     end
>
>     def new
>         @event_name = 'Online Donation'## label used on forms and in the
> controller
>
>         @form_var_name = 'donation'  ## used in the shared/_contact form
> partial which gets called in the new view
>
>         if event_params = @params['donation']
>             @donation= OnlineDonation.new(@params['donation'])
>
>             ##SET EVENT TYPE -- DIFFERENT FOR EACH METHOD -- event_type
> field in the Database
>             @donation.event_type = 'Online Donatation'
>
>             #raise @event.inspect ## dubugging for checking before
> submitting
>             if @donation.save
>                 flash[:notice] = @event_name + ' was successful.'
>                 redirect_to :action => 'success', :id=>@donation.id
>             else
>                 flash[:error] = @event_name + ' could not be accepted.'
>                 @radiant_html = process_radiant_layout( :page_id=>40,
> :title=>'Donate to the Lighthouse')  ## in application.rb
>                 render_text @radiant_html
>             end
>         else
>             @radiant_html = process_radiant_layout( :page_id=>40,
> :title=>'Donate to the Lighthouse')  ## in application.rb
>             render_text @radiant_html
>         end
>     end
>
>     def success
>         @event = OnlineDonation.find(@params['id'])
>         @radiant_html = process_radiant_layout(:page_id=>40,
> :title=>'Thanks')  ## in application.rb
>         render_text @radiant_html
>     end
>
> end
>
> the process_radiant_layout method is in the application.rb.  What is does is
> connect to the radiant database and process all of the tags using recursion,
> then uses the local view in place of the content.  So the local view for the
> new action will be just like and rails app.  The main difference is we dont
> use rails layouts, we have code to render a specific radiant page's layout
> (redirecting all links back to the other environment).
>
> -mike
>