README.markdown in ice-0.4.0 vs README.markdown in ice-0.4.1

- old
+ new

@@ -1,28 +1,33 @@ #Ice Ice Baby!!! -The Ice system for CoffeeScript/Javascript templating allows people to serve Javascript templates thanks to [The Ruby Racer](http://github.com/cowboyd/therubyracer), a gem letting you use Google's V8 Javascript engine. These templates are then compiled and served to the browser. +The Ice system for templating allows people to serve Coffescript templates from Rails applications. The advantage of this approach is that it is easy to serve these templates from a secure sandbox. Therefore, your users can upload templates that are evaluated and served, but exist securely. -One of the key advantages of this approach is that the templates execute in their own sandbox. This is the approach taken by [Liquid](http://github.com/tobi/liquid) and some of the other template systems. +This is the approach taken by [Liquid](http://github.com/tobi/liquid) and some other template systems. The advantage of using Ice for this is that you have a rich language at your disposal, as well as being able to provide your own functions that can be exposed to your users. -The template parser we currently use is Eco (written by [Sam Stephenson](https://github.com/sstephenson/eco)). This allows you to use Coffeescript with HTML in an ERB-ish fashion. +Ice builds upon two excellent Gems: + * [The Ruby Racer](http://github.com/cowboyd/therubyracer) (written by Charles Lowell). This gem lets you use Google's V8 Javascript engine. + * [Eco](https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-eco) (written by Sam Stephenson). This gem allows you to use Coffeescript with HTML in an ERB-ish fashion. + You can then write Eco templates like: <table> <tr><th>Name</th><th>Email</th></tr> <% for user in @users %> <tr> - <td><%= user.name %></td><td><%= @mailTo(user.email) %></td> + <td><%= user.name %></td><td><%= mailTo(user.email) %></td> </tr> <% end %> </table> Eco-formatted files may also exist in your filesystem, provided they have a .eco extension. Also, the templates may be compiled on demand with the method: - Ice::EcoTemplate.convert(template_text, vars = {}) + Ice::EcoTemplate.convert(template_text, variables) +The variables are whatever environment you want to pass in to the application. + ## Installation Ice is currently being developed only for Rails 3. Simply add to your Gemfile gem 'ice' @@ -31,17 +36,17 @@ Every object is revealed to the templates via its to_ice method. This helps sanitize the objects that are passed into Ice, so people editing the template only have access to a limited subset of the data. Instances of some classes like String and Numeric just return themselves as the result of to_ice. Hashes and Arrays run to_ice recursively on their members. -If you want an object to map to a different representation, simply define a to_ice object that returns whatever object you want to represent it within the eco template. These objects are referred to as "Cubes", and are equivalent to "Drops" for those used to the Liquid template. +If you want an object to map to a different representation, simply define a to_ice object that returns whatever object you want to represent it within the Eco template. These objects are referred to as "Cubes", and are equivalent to "Drops" for those used to Liquid. ## ActiveModel and to_ice To make life easy, since most complex objects passed to the templates will be classes including ActiveModel::Serializable, the default to_ice behaviour of these classes is to pass itself in to a class with the same name, but followed by the word "Cube". -Therefore calling to_ice on instance of a User class will invoke +Therefore calling to_ice on an instance of a User class will invoke UserCube.new self ## BaseCube Class @@ -68,61 +73,72 @@ Note that the results of all associations and revealed functions are also sanitized via to_ice. ## Partials -Partials may now be written in Eco, and included in Erb (and other) templates. +Partials may now be written in Eco, and included in ERB (and other) templates. + +## Helpers + +Two global arrays exist named `IceJavascriptHelpers` and `IceCoffeescriptHelpers`. If you add to those arrays strings of Javascript or Coffeescript, those strings will be included in your views. These string are also compiled in the case of Coffeescript. + +This is slightly hackish, so expect this approach to shortly be replaced with a better one. But it is a decent way to add helpers to your Eco file. + ## NavBar -To make it easier to generate links, we added a `@navBar` helper. +To make it easier to generate links, we added a `navBar` helper. - <%- @navBar (bar) => %> - <%- bar.linkTo("Bar", "/foo") %> - <%- bar.linkTo("http://ludicast.com") %> + <%= navBar (bar) => %> + <%= bar.linkTo("Bar", "/foo") %> + <%= bar.linkTo("http://ludicast.com") %> <% end %> This then generates the following html <ul class="linkBar"> <li><a href="/foo">Bar</a></li> <li><a href="http://ludicast.com">http://ludicast.com</a></li> </ul> -The `@navBar` helper also takes options so if the above was instead instantiated with: +The `navBar` helper also takes options so if the above was instead instantiated with: - <% @opts = nav_prefix:'<div>', nav_postfix: '</div>', link_prefix: '<span>', link_postfix: '</span>' %> - <%- @navBar @opts, (bar)=> %> + <% opts = nav_prefix:'<div>', nav_postfix: '</div>', link_prefix: '<span>', link_postfix: '</span>' %> + <%= navBar opts, (bar)=> %> it would generate <div> <span><a href="/foo">Bar</a></span> <span><a href="http://ludicast.com">http://ludicast.com</a></span> </div> -Also, if you want to make a site-wide change to the default NavBar settings, all you need to do is add these options to the NavBarConfig class (in Ruby) like +Also, if you want to make a site-wide change to the default NavBar settings, all you need to do is add these options to the NavBarConfig class like - NavBarConfig[:nav_prefix] = "<div>" - NavBarConfig[:nav_postfix] = "</div>" - NavBarConfig[:link_prefix] = "<span>" - NavBarConfig[:link_postfix] = "</span>" + coffeescript = <<-COFFEESCRIPT + NavBarConfig = + navPrefix: "<div>", + navPostFix: "</div>", + linkPrefix: "<span>", + linkPostFix: "</span>" + COFFEESCRIPT + IceCoffeescriptHelpers << coffeescript -Then all links will generate with these options, unless overridden in the values passed it to `@navBar`. +Then all links will generate with these options, unless overridden in the values passed in to `navBar`. ## Routes -Assuming that all your cubes are models that you are exposing to your app, we add to your eco templates routing helpers for every class inheriting from BaseCube. Therefore, if you have a cube class named `NoteDrop`, you will have the following helper methods available: +Assuming that all your cubes are models that you are exposing to your app, we add to your Eco templates routing helpers for every class inheriting from BaseCube. Therefore, if you have a cube class named `NoteCube`, you will have the following helper methods available: - @newNotePath - @notesPath - @notePath(@note) - @editNotePath(@note) + newNotePath + notesPath + notePath(@note) + editNotePath(@note) which are converted to the appropriate paths. -Note that some people might claim that it is insecure to expose your resources like this, but that probably should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. +Note that some people might claim that it is insecure to expose your resources like this, but that probably should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Besides, the fact that you are exposing these resources as cubes means that you are, well, already exposing these resources. ## Note on Patches/Pull Requests * Fork the project. * Make your feature addition or bug fix. @@ -130,10 +146,9 @@ * Commit * Send me a pull request. ## Todo -* Allow Coffeescript (or Javascript) helpers to be read from an additional file. * Add in form builders (from clots project) * Haml support * Use [Moneta](http://github.com/wycats/moneta) for caching autogenerated javascript files. * Allowing Ice to render Rails partials * Allowing Ice to serve as Rails layout files. \ No newline at end of file