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Roar mailing list, wiki and future plans

2007-03-13T00:14:00Z

I am happy to see people starting to use roar in development. As it is used, some great questions, ideas and problems have emerged. To collect all these, I’ve added a mailing list and set up a wiki. Please do visit these—contributions are most welcome!

http://rubyforge.org/mail/?group_id=2958—Mailing List
http://wiki.nanoware.com/roar/—Wiki

I’ve also put what is on my radar in the rubyforge tracker. Please add any feature requests, patches or bug reports there.

Longer term, I see the future direction of roar moving more out of the automated admin interface game, and more into the generic interface game. Basically, this would mean splitting the plugin into at least two parts—the core, and the admin interface templates. I think for many applications, the layer provided by roar provides for some unique advantages. The indirection provided by roar core may add initial development effort to the first usage, but can dramatically speed up reapplication of the same pattern. Plus, by sharing those contributions back to the community, everyone will benefit. Similarly the emphasis could shift away from the admin interface as provided, to more of an emphasis on use contributed templates. I would love to see an interface based on dojo/yui/jquery, or an interface that was designed by an actual designer.

However, those are just some of my thoughts, and are mostly just blue sky dreams right now. Right now roar provides a useful featureset out of the box due to its evolution from the use cases that I needed to tackle. In the same way, roar will continue to evolve up and out (while maintaining as much simplicity as possible) based on your input and requirements.

Tumblelog, the roar demo

2007-02-23T04:37:00Z

I wanted an app to showcase some of Roar’s capabilities, so I put up a tumblelog.

One of the things it highlights is the ability to break out of the admin backend and easily edit resources in place. If there’s interest, I might go into a more detailed walkthrough of building this app. In the meantime, grab the source, check it out, and let me know if there are any questions.

Getting started:

Download from rubyforge

Create a database (mysqladmin create tumblelog_development), or edit database.yml to suit, run rake db:migrate, and start the application with ruby ./script/server.

Update: I find it rather amusing that the day I put up a tumblelog as a technology demo, I find tumblr, a pretty nifty (and free!) tumblelog provider. If anyone is actually expecting that this tumblelog software will do anything useful… don’t! If you want a tumblelog, go to tumblr.

Roar 0.5, the Peter Gunn edition

2007-02-23T03:40:00Z

I was showing some of the cool new stuff in Roar to Bryan, and all he keeps saying is, “You don’t believe in release early, release often, do you?”. Guilty as charged—but I’ve been cooking up some pretty sweet things in the meantime. This release inspired by Peter Gunn, Hellecasters Here goes with a laundry list of some of the things that roar can now do that has me pretty excited: du du du du du du du du…

How about door number 1, with dynamic repeating fields:

# team.rb
class Team < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :players
  has_many :users, :through=>:players
end

# TeamsController:
form do
  text_field :name
  text_area :description
  select_field :league_id, :choices=>League.to_select
  has_many :players do
     auto_complete :user
     check_box :captain
     check_box :admin
  end
end

This produces repeating, nested forms on the collection, so you can edit the team and its players with one form. The result:

“Add Another” allows you to keep adding entries to the bottom of the form (via javascript).

Or door number 2, with how do you want your roar?

# routes.rb: The two lines are equivalent:
map.roar :users
map.resources :users, :path_prefix => "/admin", 
  :name_prefix => "roar_", :member => { :delete => :get }

# users_controller
roar :prefix => "admin" do
  table do
    edit :login
  end

  form do
    text_field :login
    # more fields
  end
end

Then you can access the admin backend at /admin/users. Using the domain to control routing still works with roar :subdomain => "admin" do. Pick whatever makes the most sense, or…

Door number 3, have your cake and eat it too…

After going back into the public views, I started to miss the roar convenience. I wanted to actually eat cake, so let there be cake!

class PostsController < ApplicationController
  roar :prefix => "admin" do
    # Admin definition here
  end
                
  roar :view => "show" do
     # public view here
   end
end

It’s a big hallway: Table actions

Define actions that happen to data as a collection:

table(:name => "table") do
  action
  edit :description
  boolean :done
  actions do
    done
    undone :name=>"Not Done"
    delete_checked :confirm=>"Delete all checked todos?"
  end
end

Creates:

Multiple data views

The above screenshot actually shows an alternate data view (data as a list). Multiple views can be defined side by side, and switched between with the view url parameter.

table(:view => "list") do
  action
  edit :description
  boolean :done
  actions { sortable;   done;   undone :name => "Not Done";
    delete_checked :confirm=>"Delete all checked todos?"
  }
end

Sortable

The list view can take a sortable action, for data that acts_as_list.

Separate new/edit forms:

new_form do
  text_field :username
  text_field :password
end

edit_form do
  text_field :firstname
  text_field :lastname
  text_area :bio
end

Where to from here?

Roar is still in a constant state of flux, so there will be api changes, but the more feedback, the faster it’ll stabilize. Check it out at: http://nanoware.com/roar

Roar screenshots

2007-02-02T19:27:00Z

Here are some shots of the roar plugin in actions.

News List

class NewsController < ApplicationController
  roar :subdomain => "admin" do
    order "posted_at DESC"
    
    filters do
      search :text, [:title, :intro, :body]
      select_field :status, :choices => News.status_options, :prompt=>"Status:"
      recent_dates :posted_at
    end
    
    table do
      edit    :title
      date    :posted_at, :format=>:short
      inline_select :status, :choices => News.status_options
      column  :author
      delete
    end
    
    form do
      text_field    :title
      text_area     :intro
      text_area     :body
      select_field :news_category_id, :choices => NewsCategory.to_select, :prompt=>true
      select_field :status, :choices => News.status_options, :prompt=>true
    end
  end

Edit Event

class EventsController < ApplicationController
  roar :subdomain=>"admin" do
    order "date DESC"
    per_page 10
    
    filters do
      search :text, [:name,:location,:description]
      recent_dates :date
    end
    
    table do
      edit :name
      date :date
      column :location
      delete
    end
    
    form do
      text_field :name
      text_field :location
      datetime_select :date
      text_area :description
    end
  end
end

Leagues and Divisions

This shot illustrates nested resources, with inline editing—Divisions are nested within Leagues.

class LeaguesController < ApplicationController
  roar :subdomain=>"admin" do
    order "year DESC"
    include "divisions"
    
    table do
      edit :name
      column :year
      column :season
      has_many :divisions, :inline=>true
      delete
    end
    
    form do
      text_field :name
      select_field :season, :choices => League.season_options, :prompt => true
    end
  end
end

class DivisionsController < ApplicationController
  roar :subdomain=>"admin", :parent=>:league do
    table do
      edit :name
      has_many :games
      has_many :teams
      delete
    end
    
    form do
      text_field :name
    end
  end  
end

New Game

This shot illustrates the scoped select field in action. Divisions are scoped to a League, and Teams are scoped to the Division.

This shot also illustrates the custom actions in place (:save_and_add_another).

class GamesController < ApplicationController
  roar :subdomain => "admin" do
    order "scheduled_at DESC"
    include [:division, :league, :team1, :team2]

    filters do
      select_field "league_id", :choices=>League.to_select, :prompt=>"League:"
      scoped_select_field "division_id", :to=>:league_id, :prompt=> "Division:"
    end
    
    table do
      edit(:scheduled_at) { |date| date.to_s(:short) }
      column(:division) { |div| "#{div.league.name}, #{div.name}" }
      column "team1.name"
      column "team2.name"
      column "score1"
      column "score2"
      column :played
      delete
    end
    
    form do
      select_field :league_id, :choices => League.to_select, :prompt => "League: "
      scoped_select_field :division_id, :to => :league_id, :prompt => "Division: " do |league_id|
        League.find(league_id).divisions.map { |div| [div.name, div.id] }
      end
      scoped_select_field :team1_id, :source => :team, :to => :division_id, :prompt => "Team 1:" do |div_id|
        Division.find(div_id).teams.map { |team| [team.name, team.id] }
      end
      scoped_select_field :team2_id, :source => :team, :to => :division_id, :prompt => "Team 2:" do |div_id|
        Division.find(div_id).teams.map { |team| [team.name, team.id] }
      end
      datetime_select :scheduled_at
      text_field :duration
      actions [:save, :save_and_add_another, :delete]
    end
  end
end

Getting started with Roar

2007-02-02T18:05:00Z

I recorded a short, introductory screencast, to getting started with Roar. It takes you from creating a rails app, installing the plugin, to writing your first admin interface in under 5 minutes.

This is an introductory screencast to getting started with Roar. It takes you from creating a rails app, installing the plugin, to writing your first admin interface in under 5 minutes.

Roar is coming

2007-01-29T21:23:00Z


class PostsController < ApplicationController
  roar do  
    per_page 5
    order "published_at DESC, created_at"

    filters do
      search :text, [:title,:body]
      recent_dates :created_at
    end

    table do
      edit    :title
      column  :status
      date  :published_at
      delete
    end

    form do
      text_field :title
      text_area :body
      select_field :status, :choices=>Status.to_select
      check_box :published, :name=>"Published?"
    end
  end
end

Barcamp Ottawa 2

2006-12-02T21:19:00Z

Coming soon

2006-12-02T21:18:00Z

Long gone are the animated gifs of the worker digging a hole, enter the under construction sign of the age of Creative Commons. Photo by Andreas Reinhold.