Rails - Apr 2005 - Complex Layouts - is there a better way?

Hi all,

I''ve run into a problem with my first rails app. The way that
I''m making
layouts work is ugly. Since Rails is pretty, I think that I''m doing 
something wrong.

Most of the pages in my site use the a layout that looks something like 
this:

(html)
<%= render_partial "toolbar" %>
(html)
<%= render_partial "navigation" %>
(html)
<%= render_partial "margin" %>
(html)
<%= @content_for_layout %>
(html)

This lets me set up different chunks for the toolbar, navigation, etc for 
each controller. It''s nice and I like it, but there are a few problems 
that make it ugly. First, I have to create _toolbar.rhtml, 
_navigation.rhtml, etc files for every controller or my pages won''t 
render. Second, many of my pages need to show different partials (such as 
"margin" and "toolbar") for different actions. I
can''t just create a
_controllername_margin.rhtml so I have to use a single file and divide it 
into if blocks that look at url_for.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks,
Casey

You can use a shared directory for the partials in /views/shared.

<%= render_partial ''shared/navigation'' %>

As for using "_controllername_margin.rhtml," it might be best to put a
_margin.rhtml in each view directory instead.

-- 
rick
http://techno-weenie.net

Right now, I have:

| views
+-| category
| +-- _margin.rhtml
| +-- _navigation.rhtml
|
+-| user
   +-- _margin.rhtml
   +-- _navigation.rhtml

But what I (think) I really want is...

| views
+- _navigation.rhtml (default for all)
|
+-| category
| +-- _margin.rhtml
|
+-| user
   +-- _margin.rhtml
   +-- _navigation.rhtml
   +-- _navigation_edit.rhtml
   +-- _navigation_delete.rhtml


I hope that my ugly ASCII trees don''t get too mangled by gmail...

Casey


On Fri, 22 Apr 2005, Rick Olson wrote:
> You can use a shared directory for the partials in /views/shared.
>
> <%= render_partial ''shared/navigation'' %>
>
> As for using "_controllername_margin.rhtml," it might be best to
put a
> _margin.rhtml in each view directory instead.
>
> -- 
> rick
> http://techno-weenie.net
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

This is why layouts exist [1].

Put in your application controller "layout ''main''".

Then in "./views/layouts" you have a main.rhtml that defines the main
structure.  Inside this file you can render various partials from the
layouts directory.

Then add a <%= @content_for_layout %> inside main.rhtml to render all
the stuff from the controller specific view.

I can provide more details if you need later today, right now my lunch
is over...


Jason

[1] 
http://rails.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Layout/ClassMethods.html

On Friday 22 April 2005 12:34, Casey wrote:
> Most of the pages in my site use the a layout that looks something like
> this:
>
> (html)
> <%= render_partial "toolbar" %>
You can also do

<%= @toolbar_html || render_partial(...) %>

Then in your ApplicationController, define

def without_toolbar() @toolbar_html = "" end
def with_toolbar(some options)
  @toolbar = some html generated by your choice of means
end

Then do before_filter :without_toolbar to disable the toolbar...

-- 

Nicholas Seckar aka. Ulysses