Sinatra::Tags¶ ↑

A Sinatra Extension that provides easy creation of flexible HTML tags.

To enable the Sinatra community to quickly and easily add this functionality to any app / extension they wish to create. ie: preventing time waste or the ‘re-invention of the wheel’.

#  Add RubyGems.org (former Gemcutter) to your RubyGems sources 
$  gem sources -a http://rubygems.org

$  (sudo)? gem install sinatra-tags

This Gem depends upon the following:

• sinatra ( >= 1.0.a )

• sinatra-outputbuffer (>= 0.1.0)

Optionals:

• sinatra-settings (>= 0.1.1) # to view default settings in a browser display.

• sinatra-tests (>= 0.1.6)

• rspec (>= 1.3.0 )

• rack-test (>= 0.5.3)

• rspec_hpricot_matchers (>= 0.1.0)

To start using Sinatra::Tags, just require and register the extension

…in your App…

require 'sinatra/tags'

class YourApp < Sinatra::Base
  register(Sinatra::Tags)

  <snip...>

end

…or your Extension…

require 'sinatra/tags'

module Sinatra
  module YourExtension

    <snip...>

    def self.registered(app)
      app.register Sinatra::Tags
      <snip...>
    end

  end
end

Sinatra::Tags has only one public method, with this dynamic syntax:

tag(name)
tag(name, &block)

tag(name, content)
tag(name, content, attributes)
tag(name, content, attributes, &block)

tag(name, attributes)
tag(name, attributes, &block)

This dynamic syntax provides a very flexible method as you can see in the examples below:

Self closing tags:

tag(:br)  # => 

  <br> or <br/> if XHTML

tag(:hr, :class => "space") # => 

  <hr class="space">

Multi line tags:

tag(:div) # => 

  <div></div>

tag(:div, 'content') # => 

  <div>
    content
  </div>

tag(:div, 'content', :id => 'comment') # => 

  <div id="comment">
    content
  </div>

# NB! no content
tag(:div, :id => 'comment') # => 

  <div id="comment"></div>

Single line tags:

tag(:h1,'Header') # => 

  <h1>Header</h1>

tag(:abbr, 'WHO', :title => "World Health Organization") # => 

  <abbr title="World Health Organization">WHO</abbr>

Working with blocks

tag(:div) do
  tag(:p, 'Hello World')
end
# => 

  <div>
    <p>Hello World</p>
  </div>

<% tag(:ul) do %>
  <li>item 1</li>
  <%= tag(:li, 'item 2') %>
  <li>item 3</li>
<% end %>
# => 

  <ul>
    <li>item 1</li>
    <li>item 2</li>
    <li>item 3</li>
  </ul>

# NB! ignored tag contents if given a block
<% tag(:div, 'ignored tag-content') do  %>
  <%= tag(:label, 'Comments:', :for => :comments)  %>
  <%= tag(:textarea,'textarea contents', :id => :comments)  %>
<% end  %>
# => 

  <div>
    <label for="comments">Comments:</label>
    <textarea id="comments">
      textarea contents
    </textarea>
  </div>

Boolean attributes:

tag(:input, :type => :checkbox, :checked => true)
# => 

  <input type="checkbox" checked="checked" />

tag(:option, 'Sinatra', :value => "1" :selected => true)
# => 

  <option value="1">Sinatra</option>

tag(:option, 'PHP', :value => "0" :selected => false)
# => 

  <option value="0">PHP</option>

That’s more or less it. Try it out and you’ll see what it can do for you.

The default settings should help you get moving quickly, and are fairly common sense based.

Sets the HTML output format, toggling between HTML vs XHTML. Default is: false

I prefer to output in HTML 4.0.1 Strict, but you can easily switch to XHTML by setting the value in your App or Extension:

set :tags_output_format_is_xhtml, true

…or on the fly like this

YourApp.tags_output_format_is_xhtml = true / false

self.class.tags_output_format_is_xhtml = true / false

settings.tags_output_format_is_xhtml = true / false

Sets the formatting of the HTML output, whether it should be more compact in nature or slightly better layed out. Default is: true

If the above is not clear enough, please check the Specs for a better understanding.

If something is not behaving intuitively, it is a bug, and should be reported. Report it here: github.com/kematzy/sinatra-tags/issues

• Keep it up to date with any changes in Sinatra.

• Decide on if it’s worth it to do validity checks on all attributes passed to tags ie: reject attributes based upon what is allowed for the tag.

  tag(:base, :href => 'url', :target => '_self', :id => 'is-ignored') 
  # => 
  
    <base href="url", target="_self">

• Decide on whether to add a number of convenience tags (methods), such as:

  - meta(name, contents) 
  
  - img(src, attrs)
  

• Any other improvements I or You can think of.

• Fork the project.

• Make your feature addition or bug fix.

• Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.

• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history.

  • (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)

• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright © 2010 Kematzy

Released under the MIT License.

See LICENSE for further details.

• The ActiveSupport gem by DHH & Rails Core Team