Loaf
Loaf manages and displays breadcrumb trails in your Rails application.
Features
- Use controllers and/or views to specify breadcrumb trails
- Specify urls using Rails conventions
- No markup assumptions for breadcrumbs trails rendering
- Use locales file for breadcrumb names
- Tested with Rails
>= 3.2
and Ruby>= 2.0.0
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem "loaf"
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
gem install loaf
Then run the generator:
rails generate loaf:install
Contents
- 1. Usage
- 2. API
- 2.1 breadcrumb
- 2.1.1 controller
- 2.1.2 view
- 2.1.3 :match
- 2.2 breadcrumb_trail
- 2.1 breadcrumb
- 3. Configuration
- 4. Translation
1. Usage
Loaf allows you to add breadcrumbs in controllers and views.
In order to add breadcrumbs in controller use breadcrumb
method (see 2.1).
class Blog::CategoriesController < ApplicationController
breadcrumb "Article Categories", :blog_categories_path, only: [:show]
def show
breadcrumb @category.title, blog_category_path(@category)
end
end
Then in your view render the breadcrumbs trail using breadcrumb_trail
2. API
2.1 breadcrumb
Creation of breadcrumb in Rails is achieved by the breadcrumb
helper.
The breadcrumb
method takes at minimum two arguments: the first is a name for the crumb that will be displayed and the second is a url that the name points to. The url parameter uses the familiar Rails conventions.
When using path variable blog_categories_path
:
breadcrumb "Categories", blog_categories_path
When using an instance @category
:
breadcrumb @category.title, blog_category_path(@category)
You can also use set of objects:
breadcrumb @category.title, [:blog, @category]
You can specify segments of the url:
breadcrumb @category.title, {controller: "categories", action: "show", id: @category.id}
2.1.1 controller
Breadcrumbs are inherited, so if you set a breadcrumb in ApplicationController
, it will be inserted as a first element inside every breadcrumb trail. It is customary to set root breadcrumb like so:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
breadcrumb "Home", :root_path
end
Outside of controller actions the breadcrumb
helper behaviour is similar to filters/actions and as such you can limit breadcrumb scope with familiar options :only
, :except
. Any breadcrumb specified inside actions creates another level in breadcrumbs trail.
class ArticlesController < ApplicationController
breadcrumb "All Articles", :articles_path, only: [:new, :create]
end
Each time you call the breadcrumb
helper, a new element is added to a breadcrumb trial stack:
class ArticlesController < ApplicationController
breadcrumb "Home", :root_path
breadcrumb "All Articles", :articles_path
def show
breadcrumb "Article One", article_path(:one)
breadcrumb "Article Two", article_path(:two)
end
end
Loaf allows you to call controller instance methods inside the breadcrumb
helper outside of any action. This is useful if your breadcrumb has parameterized behaviour. For example, to dynamically evaluate parameters for breadcrumb title do:
class CommentsController < ApplicationController
breadcrumb -> { find_article(params[:post_id]).title }, :articles_path
end
Also, to dynamically evaluate parameters inside the url argument do:
class CommentsController < ApplicationController
breadcrumb "All Comments", -> { post_comments_path(params[:post_id]) }
end
You may wish to define breadcrumbs over a collection. This is easy within views, and controller actions (just loop your collection), but if you want to do this in the controller class you can use the before_action
approach:
before_action do
ancestors.each do |ancestor|
breadcrumb ancestor.name, [:admin, ancestor]
end
end
Assume ancestors
method is defined inside the controller.
2.1.2 view
Loaf adds breadcrumb
helper also to the views. Together with controller breadcrumbs, the view breadcrumbs are appended as the last in breadcrumb trail. For instance, to specify view breadcrumb do:
<% breadcrumb @category.title, blog_category_path(@category) %>
2.1.3 :match
Loaf allows you to define matching conditions in order to make a breadcrumb current with the :match
option.
The :match
key accepts the following values:
-
:inclusive
- the default value, which matches nested paths -
:exact
- matches only the exact same path -
:exclusive
- matches only direct path and its query parameters if present -
/regex/
- matches based on regular expression -
{foo: bar}
- match based on query parameters
For example, to force a breadcrumb to be the current regardless do:
breadcrumb "New Post", new_post_path, match: :exact
To make a breadcrumb current based on the query parameters do:
breadcrumb "Posts", posts_path(order: :desc), match: {order: :desc}
2.2 breadcrumb_trail
In order to display breadcrumbs use the breadcrumb_trail
view helper. It accepts optional argument of configuration options and can be used in two ways.
One way, given a block it will yield all the breadcrumbs in order of definition:
breadcrumb_trail do |crumb|
...
end
The yielded parameter is an instance of Loaf::Crumb
object with the following methods:
crumb.name # => the name as string
crumb.path # => the path as string
crumb.url # => alias for path
crumb.current? # => true or false
For example, you can add the following semantic markup to show breadcrumbs using the breadcrumb_trail
helper like so:
<nav aria-label="breadcrumb">
<ol class="breadcrumbs">
<% breadcrumb_trail do |crumb| %>
<li class="<%= crumb.current? ? "current" : "" %>">
<%= link_to crumb.name, crumb.url, (crumb.current? ? {"aria-current" => "page"} : {}) %>
<% unless crumb.current? %><span>::</span><% end %>
</li>
<% end %>
</ol>
</nav>
For Bootstrap 4:
<% #erb %>
<nav aria-label="breadcrumb">
<ol class="breadcrumb">
<% breadcrumb_trail do |crumb| %>
<li class="breadcrumb-item <%= crumb.current? ? "active" : "" %>">
<%= link_to_unless crumb.current?, crumb.name, crumb.url, (crumb.current? ? {"aria-current" => "page"} : {}) %>
</li>
<% end %>
</ol>
</nav>
And, if you are using HAML
do:
- # haml
%ol.breadcrumb
- breadcrumb_trail do |crumb|
%li.breadcrumb-item{class: crumb.current? ? "active" : "" }
= link_to_unless crumb.current?, crumb.name, crumb.url, (crumb.current? ? {"aria-current" => "page"} : {})
Usually best practice is to put such snippet inside its own _breadcrumbs.html.erb
partial.
The second way is to use the breadcrumb_trail
without passing a block. In this case, the helper will return an enumerator that you can use to, for example, access an array of names pushed into the breadcrumb trail in order of addition. This can be handy for generating page titles from breadcrumb data.
For example, you can define a breadcrumbs_to_title
method in ApplicationHelper
like so:
module ApplicationHelper
def breadcrumbs_to_title
breadcrumb_trail.map(&:name).join(">")
end
end
Use whichever of the two ways is more convenient given your application structure and needs.
3. Configuration
There is a small set of custom opinionated defaults. The following options are valid parameters:
:match # set match type, default :inclusive (see [:match](#213-match) for more details)
You can override them in your views by passing them to the view breadcrumb
helper
<% breadcrumb_trail(match: :exclusive) do |name, url, styles| %>
..
<% end %>
or by configuring an option in config/initializers/loaf.rb
:
Loaf.configure do |config|
config.match = :exclusive
end
4. Translation
You can use locales files for breadcrumbs' titles. Loaf assumes that all breadcrumb names are scoped inside breadcrumbs
namespace inside loaf
scope. However, this can be easily changed by passing scope: 'new_scope_name'
configuration option.
en:
loaf:
breadcrumbs:
name: 'my-breadcrumb-name'
Therefore, in your controller/view you would do:
class Blog::CategoriesController < ApplicationController
breadcrumb 'blog.categories', :blog_categories_path
end
And corresponding entry in locale would be:
en:
loaf:
breadcrumbs:
blog:
categories: 'Article Categories'
Contributing
Questions or problems? Please post them on the issue tracker. You can contribute changes by forking the project and submitting a pull request. You can ensure the tests are passing by running bundle
and rake
.
License
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.
Code of Conduct
Everyone interacting in the Loaf project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.
Copyright
Copyright (c) 2011 Piotr Murach. See LICENSE.txt for further details.