extra_extra - Let your users read all about how awesome your app is!

Release Notes are useful for internal applications where users might like a list of what changed when. This is a Rails Engine that allows you to manage a file RELEASE_NOTES.md at the root of your app and have it served-up as /release_notes to your app's users.

Install

In your Gemfile:

gem 'extra_extra'

After a bundle install, set it up in config/routes.rb:

mount ExtraExtra::Engine, at: "/release_notes"

Finally, create a RELEASE_NOTES.md file at the root of your app's directory:

# Sep 14, 2014

* Created a release notes engine!

When you restart your app, you can now visit /release_notes and see your notes rendered in HTML.

Controlling Look and Feel

You have some limited ability to customize how the release notes are rendered.

Layout

By default, the release notes are rendered inside your app's main application layout. This may not be what you want if your application layout uses any app-specific path helpers or other methods provided by your app.

In this case, we recommend you create a layout just for your release notes and set it in the initializer

Create app/views/layouts/release_notes.html.erb:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <body data-no-turbolink ontouchstart="">
    <section class="content" role="main">
      <%= yield %>
    </section>
  </body>
</html>

Then set this up in config/initializers/extra_extra.rb:

ExtraExtra.layout_name = 'release_notes'

HTML

By default, each top-level header is rendered as an <h2>, second level as an <h3> and so on. This is because the page title is at an <h1>, so this strategy is more semantically correct. Further, each header is given a class that is h followed by the number one greater than the h tag's level (so, two greater than what Markdown dictates the header level to be):

<h2 class="h3">July 4, 2014</h2>
<p>
We released some stuff
</p>

You can control this in config/initializers/extra_extra.rb in your app:

ExtraExtra.renderer_options = {
  header_level_offset: 0,           # h1's are h1
  header_class_prefix: "f",         # with a class fX
  header_class_prefix_offset: 0,    # where X is the header, e.g. <h1 class="f1">Title</h1>
}

CSS

This engine provides no CSS or other look and feel. By using a layout in your application, your styles will be used. You can further customize the release notes by taking advantage of the generated HTML.

Everything is wrapped in a <section class='release-notes'>...</section>
The title "Release Notes" is the only <h1> rendered (in the default configuration)
In the default configuration, Markdown titles are rendered as "plus 1", meaning headers that would normally be an <h1> are rendered as <h2> and so on.
Each <h2> (which corresponds to major sections in your RELEASE_NOTES.md file) gets an anchor for deep linking.

extra_extra

Development

Runtime

extra_extra - Let your users read all about how awesome your app is!

Install

Controlling Look and Feel

Layout

HTML

CSS