Frontend Helpers

HARD DEPENDENCY: HAML & SASS I do plan on making it work for both ERB & HAML but currently all my projects use both, so I haven't found the time to add this option.

This is a collection of Rails 3.1 Helpers that I have compiled together into one nice neat special little gem... it'll handle doing things such as a few HTML5 helpers, Meta tag creation, Facebook Open Graph Tag Creation, javascript integration for, Google Analytics, Chartbeat, Inspectlet, Mixpanel, Woopra, Kissmetrics, Quantcast, and Olark, as well I've packaged in a few of my favorite/most used javascript libraries for building amazing web apps, and last but not least, added a great reset.css.sass file that goes really nicely with my variables.css.sass file, for a basic clean view.

Try it on your next project, I'm sure you'll like it.

Getting Started

First in your Rails 3.1 Project start by adding this to your Gemfile:

gem "frontend-helpers"

Then run bundle install to install the gem from RubyGems

Next Steps

If you plan on using the gem for the Rails Helpers, keep reading if you'd only like to use it for the access to the javascript assets & css assets you can skip ahead...

Anyways for the helpers your going to need to generate a few files first to do so run:

$ rails g frontend:install

This should come up and tell you that it's copying config/settings.yml, config/services.yml & app/assets/stylesheets/variables.css.sass

Then you can start editing them:

HTML5

before you use the HTML5 HTML tag as Paul Irish wrote for the HTML5 Boilerplate application_controller.rb add:

include FrontendHelpers::Html5Helper

Then in your application.html.haml instead of using %html use

- html_tag class: 'no-js' do

Settings.yml

Before you start adding your content to the settings.yml you should probably start by including the helper in your application_controller.rb add:

include FrontendHelpers::MetatagHelper

Next where ever you want the metatags to appear use:

- meta_tags

In the settings.yml you'll find a list of tags that can be filled out with your applications information all of these tags will get replicated into meta tags, if you choose not to use one you can either leave it blank or remove it.

Of course just because they are set in this file does not mean you can't change them per page this is how you would do that....

Say for instance you set the key title

:title: "Chris Hein's Site"

And on the homepage you liked that, but maybe on the about page you would like it to say About Chris Hein with this plugin that's really simple, in your action for your about page simple add an instance variable as so:

@meta_title = "About Chris Hein"

This will overwrite the current title with whatever you'd like. This is the list of available tags and how to overwrite them:

title: @meta_title,
keywords: @meta_keywords,
description: @meta_description,
author: @meta_author,
email: @meta_email,
copyright: @meta_copyright,
generator: @meta_generator,
rating: @meta_rating,
language: @meta_language,
distribution: @meta_distribution,
robots: @robots,
:"fb:app_id" => @meta_fb_app_id,
:"og:title" => @meta_og_title,
:"og:description" => @meta_og_description,
:"og:url" => request.url,
:"og:site_name" => @meta_og_site_name,
:"og:type" => @meta_og_type,
:"og:image" => @meta_og_image,
:"og:locality" => @meta_og_locality,
:"og:region" => @meta_og_region,
:"og:country_name" => @meta_og_country_name,
:"og:phone_number" => @meta_og_phone_number

Services.yml

Before you start adding your content to the services.yml you should probably start by including the helper in your application_controller.rb add:

include FrontendHelpers::ServicesHelper

Next where ever you want the services javascript to appear (I'd recommend using it at the end of the body) use:

- webservice [:google, :olark, :chartbeat, :inspectlet, :mixpanel, :woopra, :kissmetrics, :quantcast]

This example shows all of the services that can be included although you will not see any of them unless you have added the necessary information in the services.yml you can remove any of them from the array if need be.

Inside the services.yml you will find all of variables that should be set to use each one of the services. All of them are pretty self explanatory and the keys can be gotten from each service.

Assets

As far as the assets I've added a few of my favorite and most used javascript libraries, those are:

CHANGED!!!

I've removed backbone from this repo, in favor of using the backbone-rails gem it gives you really nice generators and a few other really nice things.

All of these can be added to your manifest file for Sprockets like this

//= require fancybox
//= require ie
//= require jquery.async
//= require jquery.cookie
//= require jquery.easing
//= require jquery.lifestream
//= require jquery.slides
//= require jquery.tablesorter
//= require jquery.validate
//= require log
//= require modernizr
//= require shortcut
//= require swfobject
//= require tempo

Not only did I add a bunch of wonderfully awesome javascript libs I also added a css reset that can be used, as well as a base variables... Although with sprockets currently you cannot include files with persistent variables, so I would highly recommend using SASS's built in @import to include files to do so include both files like so rename application.css to application.css.sass then add:

@import "variables.css.sass"
@import "reset.css.sass"
@import "fancybox.css.scss"

Email Template

I've done my fair share of email template work... and I know it's not fun, but I have to say Sean Powell has done a great job compiling a great starting platform for constructing your HTML emails, so I've taken his code and added it as a base layout call email.html.haml so you can just include it when you are sending off you emails using layout: "email"

Thanks

I hope you enjoy using this Rubygem, if you have any questions, issues, or feature requests please make them in the issues section, I'll be continually adding to this so please keep checking in on the progress.

Contributing to Frontend Helpers

Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn't been implemented or the bug hasn't been fixed yet
Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn't requested it and/or contributed it
Fork the project
Start a feature/bugfix branch
Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution
Make sure to add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.

Copyright

All javascript libraries are still copyrighted to their respective owners, this is just a way to easy add them to any project without having to deal with the files themselves.