GIANT ROBOTS SMASHING INTO OTHER GIANT ROBOTS

Last year, we wrote about static pages for the enterprise.

Since then, we’ve fine-tuned our PagesController into a Rails engine called High Voltage.

Static pages?

Yeah, like “About us”, “Directions”, marketing pages, etc.

Installation

script/plugin install git://github.com/thoughtbot/high_voltage.git

Usage

Write your static pages and put them in the RAILS_ROOT/app/views/pages directory.

mkdir app/views/pages
touch app/views/pages/about.html.erb

After putting something interesting there, you can link to it from anywhere in your app with:

link_to "About", page_path("about")

Bam.

Override

Most common reasons to override? Authentication, layouts.

Create a PagesController of your own:

script/generate controller pages

Then modify it to subclass from High Voltage, adding whatever you need:

class PagesController < HighVoltage::PagesController
  before_filter :authenticate
  layout "danger"
end

Don’t forget to add the new route:

map.resources :pages,
  :controller => 'pages',
  :only       => [:show]

Testing

Just a suggestion, but you can test your pages using Shoulda pretty easily:

class PagesControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
  tests PagesController

  %w(earn_money screencast about contact).each do |page|
    context "on GET to /pages/#{page}" do
      setup { get :show, :id => page }

      should_respond_with :success
      should_render_template page
    end
  end
end

Enjoy!