= Apotomo

<em>Web Components for Rails.</em>

== Overview

Do you need an <b>interactive user interface</b> for your Rails application? A cool Rich Client Application with dashboards, portlets and AJAX, Drag&Drop and jQuery?

Is your controller gettin' fat? And your partial-helper-AJAX pile is getting out of control?

Do you want a framework to make the implementation easier? <b>You want Apotomo.</b> 

== Apotomo

Apotomo is based on {Cells}[http://github.com/apotonick/cells], the popular View Components framework for Rails.

It gives you widgets and encapsulation, bubbling events, AJAX page updates, rock-solid testing and more. Check out http://apotomo.de for a bunch of tutorials and a nice web 2.0 logo.

== Installation

Easy as hell.

=== Rails 3

  gem install apotomo

=== Rails 2.3

  gem install apotomo -v 0.1.4

Don't forget to load the gem in your app, either in your +Gemfile+ or +environment.rb+.

== Example!

A _shitty_ example is worse than a _shitty_ framework, so let's choose wisely...

Say you had a blog application. The page showing the post should have a comments block, with a list of comments and a form to post a new comment. Submitting should validate and send back the updated comments list, via AJAX.

Let's wrap that comments block in a widget.

== Generate

Go and generate a widget stub.

  $ rails generate apotomo:widget CommentsWidget display write -e haml
    create  app/cells/
    create  app/cells/comments_widget
    create  app/cells/comments_widget.rb
    create  app/cells/comments_widget/display.html.haml
    create  app/cells/comments_widget/write.html.haml
    create  test/widgets/comments_widget_test.rb

Nothing special.

== Plug it in

You now tell your controller about the new widget.

  class PostsController < ApplicationController
    include Apotomo::Rails::ControllerMethods
    
    has_widgets do |root|
      root << widget('comments_widget', 'post-comments', :post => @post)
    end

The widget is named <tt>post-comments</tt>. We pass the current post into the widget - the block is executed in controller instance context, that's were <tt>@post</tt> comes from. Handy, isn't it?

== Render the widget

Rendering usually happens in your controller view, <tt>views/posts/show.html.haml</tt>, for instance.

  %h1 @post.title
  
  %p
    @post.body
  
  %p
    = render_widget 'post-comments'

== Write the widget

A widget is like a cell which is like a mini-controller.

  class CommentsWidget < Apotomo::Widget
    responds_to_event :post
    
    def display(args)
      @comments = args[:post].comments # the parameter from outside.
      render
    end

Having +display+ as the default state when rendering, this method collects comments to show and renders its view.

And look at line 2 - if encountering a <tt>:post</tt> event we invoke +#post+, which is simply another state. How cool is that? 

    def post(evt)
      @comment = Comment.new(:post_id => evt[:post_id])
      @comment.update_attributes evt[:comment]  # a bit like params[].
      
      update :state => :display
    end
  end


The event is processed with three steps in our widget:

* create the new comment
* re-render the +display+ state
* update itself on the page

Apotomo helps you focusing on your app and takes away the pain of <b>action dispatching</b> and <b>page updating</b>.

== Triggering events

So how and where is the <tt>:post</tt> event triggered?

Take a look at the widget's view <tt>display.html.haml</tt>.
  = widget_div do
    %ul
      - for c in @comments
        %li c.text
    
    - form_for :comment, @comment, :url => url_for_event(:post), :remote => true do |f|
      = f.error_messages
      = f.text_field :text
  
      = submit_tag "Don't be shy, comment!"

That's a lot of familiar view code, almost looks like a _partial_.

As soon as the form is submitted, the form gets serialized and sent using the standard Rails mechanisms. The interesting part here is the endpoint URL returned by #url_for_event as it will trigger an Apotomo event.

== Event processing

Now what happens when the event request is sent? Apotomo - again - does three things for you, it

* <b>accepts the request</b> on a special event route it adds to your app
* <b>triggers the event</b> in your ruby widget tree, which will invoke the +#post+ state in our comment widget
* <b>sends back</b> the page updates your widgets rendered

== JavaScript Agnosticism

In this example, we use jQuery for triggering. We could  also use Prototype, RightJS, YUI, or a self-baked framework, that's up to you.

Also, updating the page is in your hands. Where Apotomo provides handy helpers as +#replace+, you could also <b>emit your own JavaScript</b>.

Look, +replace+ basically generates

  $("post-comments").replaceWith(<the rendered view>);

If that's not what you want, do

  def post(evt)
    if evt[:comment][:text].explicit?
      render :text => 'alert("Hey, you wanted to submit a pervert comment!");'
    end
  end

Apotomo doesn't depend on _any_ JS framework - you choose!

== Testing

Apotomo comes with its own test case and assertions to <b>build rock-solid web components</b>.

  class CommentsWidgetTest < Apotomo::TestCase
    has_widgets do |root|
      root << widget(:comments_widget, 'me', :post => @pervert_post)
    end
    
    def test_render
      render_widget 'me'
      assert_select "li#me"
      
      trigger :post, :comment => {:text => "Sex on the beach"}
      assert_response 'alert("Hey, you wanted to submit a pervert comment!");'
    end
  end

You can render your widgets, spec the markup, trigger events and assert the event responses, so far. If you need more, let us know!

== More features

There's even more, too much for a simple README.

[Statefulness]      Deriving your widget from +StatefulWidget+ gives you free statefulness.
[Composability]     Widgets can range from small standalone components to nested widget trees like complex dashboards.
[Bubbling events]   Events bubble up from their triggering source to root and thus can be observed, providing a way to implement loosely coupled, distributable components.           
[Team-friendly]     Widgets encourage encapsulation and help having different developers working on different components without getting out of bounds.


Give it a try- you will love the power and simplicity of real web components!


== Bugs, Community
Please visit http://apotomo.de, the official project page with <em>lots</em> of examples.

If you have questions, visit us in the IRC channel #cells at irc.freenode.org.

If you wanna be cool, subscribe to our feed[http://feeds.feedburner.com/Apotomo]!


== License
Copyright (c) 2007-2011 Nick Sutterer <apotonick@gmail.com> under the MIT License