Adding content to static files.

I have several static files(pages), which are basically copies of my website pages source code, with the content changed. These files support my website, (keeping the same format) in various ways. For example the menu part is:-

<body>

  <div id="menu">

<ul class="level1" id="root"> etc etc. until </ul>         </div>

Unfortunately every month or so my menu bar changes and I have to update each static file manually. As each of my static files have the same menu. Is it possible to have one menu file which can be updated and have the static files load them automatically. I plan to have several more static files. So this would be a great help if someone can suggest how to accomplish this.

I would recommend providing a 'main' controller (or whatever you want to call it) that just serves up the effectively static pages. Initially you can just put the html straight into each page.html.erb and render them specifying no layout. Then you can refactor them and use the rails capabilities of partials, helpers and so on to put your re-usable menu into a partial to make life easy.

Colin

Thanks for that which gives me an idea to create one controller and import each static page content into it somehow. Then I would not have to even worry about updating the menu at all.

Though I would assert that Colin's suggestion is the better, you might also consider using a static site generator for your static content: something like nanoc or jekyll.

Sounds to me that you need to use layouts for your application. By doing this, you need to only update one file and it'll be reflected everywhere on your site.

L

I ended up creating one controller without a model. (rails g controller staticpages) I then created a layout file which imported the individual changes to the layout, via a "yield" tied to a "content_for" in the view files(static files(pages) in the "view of staticpages"(for example abbreviations, aboutthissite etc etc). The rest of the static file loaded with the usual "yield" to the layout. Works a treat. No more updating the menu bar all done automatically. To get to the correct static file I created a route using:-

match 'static/:static_page_name'=> 'staticpages#show' (or in rails 2.x:- map.connect 'static/:static_page_name', :controller=> "staticpages", :action=> "show"

"static_page_name" variable accepted anything after "/static/" in the url and passed it to the controller "staticpages" in which I set up a show action containing:-

  def show     @static_page_name = params[:static_page_name]     allowed_pages = %w(abbreviations aboutthissite etc, etc,)     if allowed_pages.include?(@static_page_name)       render @static_page_name     else       redirect_to '/' #redirects to homepage if link does not exists     end   end

I then only had to change the links in the website. (e.g.<%= link_to " About This Site ", '/static/aboutthissite' %>)

and viola! its all working.