Very Basic Widget

Documentation in Progress

I will try to explain how to create a very simple widget to help you understand how to use apotomo. I asume you understand how cells works.
In the first iteration we will create a widget only to show text.

Create an empty widget

scripts/generator widget text show

This must create:

• app/cells/text_cell.rb
• app/cells/text/show.html.erb
• test/functional/test_text_cell.rb

Put some content in the widget

We need to define a micro-controller for our widget.

• Edit: app/cells/text_cell

class TextCell < Apotomo::StatefulWidget
  def transition_map
    { 
    }
  end
  def show
    @text = "it's alive"
    nil
  end
end

Note we need return nil if we want to render a view, else what you return is rendered.

Also we need to create a view for that micro controller

• Edit: app/cells/text/show.html.erb

<h1>Text#show</h1>
<p>This is your text: <%= @text %></p>

Stick our widget to a normal controller.

• Edit: app/controllers/foo_controller.rb

class FooController < ApplicationController
  include Apotomo::ControllerMethods
  def index
    use_widgets do |root|
      root << cell(:text, :show, 'text_widget')
    end
    @widget = render_widget 'text_widget'
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html
    end
  end
end

Note what we did here:

• include the Apotomo ControllerMethods
• define our widget with use_widgets using this format:

root << cell(:WidgetName,:WidgetAction,'Assigned_Name')

• assign our widget to a instace variable:

@widget = render_widget 'Assigned_Name'

Finally we need to render the widget in the view of the same controller.

• Edit: app/views/foo/index.html.erb

<%= @widget %>

Reuse the widget

This doesn’t works right know because is under heavy development

What if we want to use the same widget in several controllers?
You can share widgets using application_widget_tree.rb
Remove the use_widgets block from your controller and edit app/model/_application_widget_tree, Add this:

class ApplicationWidgetTree < Apotomo::WidgetTree
  def draw
    root << cell(:text, :show, 'text_widget')
  end
end

We just define the widget as we did before using use_widgets. Notice all widgets definitions must go in a method called draw.

Pass options to the widget from the controller (not finished)

When render the widget you can pass all options you need:

@widget = render_widget 'assigned_name', :foo => "bar"

So in the widget controller you can use:

def show
  @text = @opts[:foo]
  nil
end