Getting Started with the Ajax Scaffold Plugin

Sep 022006

AjaxScaffold has been deprecated in favour of ActiveScaffold

Install

The easiest way to install the plugin version of Ajax Scaffold (AS) is to use the inbuilt Rails installer script. Simply run the following command from the root of your Rails app:

ruby script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ajaxscaffoldp/trunk

This will fetch the plugin into ‘vendor/plugins’. The files required by the plugin (views, css and js) will then be copied over to the app on startup.

Basic Usage

With the plugin installed simply adding the following line:

ajax_scaffold :model_name_in_lower_case

to the top of any ActionController class, will result in the creation of the swath of CRUD methods required for Richard White’s great AJAX front end.

Then stick this in your layout:

<%= ajax_scaffold_includes %>

Voila!!! The full AS table will then be available at: http://my_server_address/my_controller_name/

For example – lets say we wanted to create a simple user administration interface. First off we generate the users model:

ruby script/generate model user

Then create the users table in the database using the following migration.

create_table "users" do |t|
  t.column "name", :string, :limit => 255, :null => false
  t.column "password", :string, :limit => 255, :null => false
  t.column "created_at", :datetime, :null => false
  t.column "updated_at", :datetime, :null => false
end

Now, generate a controller:

ruby script/generate controller users

Open the controller file, users_controller.rb and add the plugin include:

class UsersController < ApplicationController
  ajax_scaffold :user
end

Create a layout file called users.rhtml:

<!DOCTYPE html
     PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
     "DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
<head>
  <title>Users</title>
  <%= ajax_scaffold_includes %>
</head>
<body>

   <%= @content_for_layout %>

</body>
</html>

Start Webrick, point your favourite browser (Firefox, of course) at http://localhost:3000/users and ……… you should see this:



Now you can go ahead and add, edit, page, and sort your users. Of course in real life having plain text passwords would probably be frowned upon and there is no validation but you get the idea.

Options

So you’ve got a table, what else does it do? Ok, there are a few options that can be passed to the plugin that affect the behaviour and appearance. These are:

except- this takes an array of any of these strings: “create”, “edit”, “delete” and prevents the generation of the corresponding method. This also removes the appropriate elements from the displayed table.

e.g ajax_scaffold :user, :except => [‘create’, ‘delete’]

would create a controller with no create or delete methods.

width – this takes a number representing the width in pixels of the generated table.

e.g ajax_scaffold :user, :width => 500

creates a table of width 500px.

rel_width – this takes a number between 0 and 1 representing the relative width of the table to its containing element.
e.g ajax_scaffold :user, rel_width => 0.7
produces a table of 70% width

rows_per_page – this dictates the maximum number of rows displayed before pagination

e.g ajax_scaffold :user, :rows_per_page => 10

totals – this takes an array of strings representing the names of the columns that you would like totals to be created for. If not null this option causes a totals row to be added to the bottom of the table.

e.g ajax_scaffold :user, :totals => [‘login_cnt’]

would produce a row showing the total number of logins for all the users on the page (assuming of course our model had an incrementing field called login_cnt, see later for another example).

suffix – this emulates the suffix option of the Rails scaffold and when set to true generates all the methods specific to the model allowing for multiple tables to be placed within a single controller (see following section)

Mutiple Scaffolds on a Page

There are two ways to place mutiple tables on a single page, the first (and probably the approved REST / CRUD way) is to create a controller for each model that you wish to have a table for. Setup each table as required using the options to the ajax_scaffold method and then simply include each table in a single rhtml file using a call to render the component.

<%= render_component :controller => '/users', :action => 'table', :params => params %>
<%= render_component :controller => '/articles', :action => 'table', :params => params %>
<%= render_component :controller => '/pages', :action => 'table', :params => params %>

If however, you don’t want to go down that path, say you just want an admin controller to administrate the user, article and page models the you can do all this with a single file. Simply create an ‘admin’ controller and declare each model with a separate ajax_scaffold call. Make sure to pass the ’:suffix => true’ option:

class AdminController < ApplicationController
  ajax_scaffold :user, :rows_per_page => 3, :suffix => true, :width => 500
  ajax_scaffold :article, :except => ['edit'], :suffix => true, :rel_width => 0.4
  ajax_scaffold :page, :except => ['delete'], :rows_per_page => 10, :suffix => true, :width => 400

  def index
  end
end

The index page (don’t forget to add the index method) will then look slightly different, with the calls to table now using the prefix of the model name:

<%= render_component :controller => '/admin', :action => 'users_table', :params => params %>
<%= render_component :controller => '/admin', :action => 'articles_table', :params => params %>
<%= render_component :controller => '/admin', :action => 'pages_table', :params => params %>

This setup (with a bit of data added) gives:

Totalled Columns

Now suppose you want to add totals for the “views” columns in the articles and pages tables. Easy. Just change the declaration in the controller to:

class AdminController < ApplicationController
  ajax_scaffold :article, :except => ['create','edit'], :suffix => true, :rel_width => 0.4, :totals => ['views']
  ajax_scaffold :page, :except => ['delete'], :rows_per_page => 5, :suffix => true, :width => 500, :totals => ['views']

  def index
  end
end

Now we get (note the create method has been dropped of the articles table):

Customizing the View

On startup the plugin creates a directory called ajax_scaffold in app/views. This contains all the views required by AS. If you want to alter one of the templates simply copy it to the appropriate views directory and update it.

The search path employed by the plugin is as follows:

  1. app/views/model_name
  2. app/views/controller_name
  3. app/views/ajax_scaffold

So for our example with an admin controller, and then user, article and page models we could override the table.rhtml for all tables displayed by placing our custom template in “app/views/admin”. We could then have a user specific form by placing _form.rhtml in “app/views/user”. The article and page models would keep using the generated form from app/views/ajax_scaffold.

No Responses to “Getting Started with the Ajax Scaffold Plugin”

  1. Scott Rutherford says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hi Andrew,

    See "this post":http://blog.caronsoftware.com/articles/2007/01/22/ajaxscaffold-and-rails-1-2-1

    Cheers
    Scott

  2. Scott Rutherford says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hi Patrick, glad you got it sorted. Scott.

  3. Martin says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    I wanted to try the ajax_scaffold_plugin, as the generator is outdated. When I run: ruby script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ajaxscaffoldp/trunk nothing happens.

    I installed gem install ajax_scaffold_plugin, version 3.2.4. Do I have to install additional software to use the svn command? Thanks in advance

  4. Asghar says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    I seem to have the same problem as Martin has, i.e if i run : svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ajaxscaffoldp/trunk, nothing actually happens…

    And also i have installed the plugin, version 3.2.4. please guide….

  5. Martin says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Some additional informationI’m on: Rails 1.2.1. MySQL 5.0.11 RadRails 0.72 and WinXP. Basic Rails and database work within without problems.

    Thanks in advance to everyone who can help.

  6. Murali Varadarajan says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    I had the same problem. Guess what, i just copied the whole plugin and pasted it under vendor/plugins.
    Now it works.

    To download the plugin in zip format go to http://rubyforge.org/projects/ajaxscaffoldp/

  7. Martin says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Thanks I will try your suggestion.

  8. Scott Rutherford says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hi Guys, I think RubyForge was just having a bad day because it all works fine for me now. I would suggest trying the

    ./script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ajaxscaffoldp/trunk

    command again.

    Cheers
    Scott

  9. mustard76 says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    the plugin worked perfectly for me. thank a lot!

  10. James says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Good day Scott,
    I get the following error when I hit the "Create New" button:
    RJS Error:
    TypeError: element has no properties

    I’m using Firefox 2. My model has a few has_many & belongs_to. After I Ok the error it works fine and inserts the new record correctly…

  11. Eric Pugh says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Scott,

    Is Ajax Scaffold Plugin Rails 1.2.1 ready? I’m having some problems with getting the Delete buttons to do anything, and I get a whole slew of deprecation warnings….

    Thanks,
    Eric

  12. Scott Rutherford says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    @James, that sounds like the error we were getting from using Prototype RC1 / RC0, it went away in 1.2.1.

    @Eric, and @James I think both your issues will be solved by 3.2.4 and 1.2.2.

    Cheers
    Scott

  13. Japo says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hi guys, I have a dilemma.

    what if you want two versions of the same table to scaffold (one without the delete link). say:

    <pre>ajax_scaffold :data_file, :width => 600, :except =>['create','edit', 'delete']
    ajax_scaffold :data_file, :width => 600, :except =>['create','edit']</pre>

    i need one table to show when i’m logged in and the other when im not. :p

  14. Christian says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hi Folks,

    I got the simple single table example working and it´s amazing how simple it is using the ajax scaffold plugin. But now I´m trying to implement a simple workflow where I need to redirect to another page, when some action was performed in another page. But I cannot get the redirection working.

    I already posted in the forum where you can also find an example of what I´m trying:(http://groups.google.com/group/ajaxscaffold/browse_frm/thread/62bcb14b3c000ef8).

    But I got no answer until now and I need to figure out how it works pretty soon. So could someone provide me information on how to implement a workflow, like described in my forum posting?

    Thanks & Regards,

    Christian

  15. Scott Rutherford says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    @ Japo, you have two choices I think. You can use 2 controllers, or you could override the _actions template and instead of using the :except declaration you can just do a check on current_user and only show the delete action if required.

    @ Christian, I think Lance’s answer on the forum is correct, you can’t use a normal redirect when the request is an ajax one and all the action link requests are ajax. Probably the easiest thing to do is override _actions for yourself and use standard html requests instead of the Ajax.Request the scaffold uses.

    Cheers
    Scott

  16. Joe says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hi,

    Is there a way to customize the contoller for ajax scaffolding?

    Thanks,
    Joe

  17. Horst P says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Something seems to be wrong with param (un)escaping. After reloading an ajax ajaxffold plugin generated site (current svn sources) some params are duplicated, and the names of the duplicates (the keys) are prefixed with "amp;" or "%3B". Example URL:

    <pre><code>
    http://myserver:1111/statview/update_table?sort_direction=asc&scaffold_id=statview&sort=blog_entries&%3Bscaffold_id=statview&page=1&%3Bpage=1
    </code></pre>

    And the POST parameters of that request:

    amp;page 1<br>
    amp;scaffold_id statview<br>
    page 1<br>
    scaffold_id statview<br>
    sort blog_entries<br>
    sort_direction asc<br>

    Can anyone confirm that? I’m not familiar enough with ajax scaffold yet to spot and fix the bug.

  18. Jon Seidel says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    I got AjaxScaffold up and running but it’s only partially working. The main screen displays, but when I click on "Edit" or "Create New", the spinner just goes and nothing else happens. This happens on bothy FF2 and IE6. Any suggestions as to what I should look for?

  19. Horst P says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Minor correction to my last post: There are no POST parameters – the request body is empty. So there are only URL request params.

  20. railsgrunt.com says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hey, Thanks for releasing such an awesome plugin. I am definitely using this for my classifieds project that is almost finished.

  21. Scott Rutherford says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    @Jon, sounds like you have 1.2.2 but haven’t updated your javascripts. do:

    rake rails:update:javascripts

    cheers
    Scott.

  22. Scott Rutherford says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    @Railsgrunt – thanks.

    @Horst P – thats a new one on me.

    To both you guys though. Have you taken a look at our new project http://www.activescaffold.com this is replacing ajaxscaffold and provides some cool new features.

    Scott.

  23. Rita says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    I want to add a condition while displaying records where i should i add that condition?

  24. Scott Rutherford says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hi Rita,

    You just define a method called conditions_for_{plural_model_name}_collection in your controller and then you can add any normal ActiveRecord style conditions there.

    Cheers
    Scott

  25. Scott Rutherford says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hi Rita,

    You just define a method called conditions_for_{plural_model_name}_collection in your controller and then you can add any normal ActiveRecord style conditions there.

    Cheers
    Scott

  26. sunds2 says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    (1) I tried installing using svn command at the top. I got message successfully installed – but there was no directory under plugins.
    (2) So I downloaded the zip and manually moved contents under plugins directory. Then followed directions to scaffold my users table. The contents of my users table are shown – but no style missing; click on edit or delete – table is not updated. Click on new. New page is opened. It is as if the page is degraded to HTML rather than ajax. I have rails 1.2.2
    Any suggestions – what is happening?
    – sunds2

  27. Bill Bartmann says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Excellent site, keep up the good work

  28. Kreyj says:
    September 2, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    I’d sweetie to be aware that too!

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