= MasterView - Rails-optimized (x)html friendly template engine
MasterView is a template engine plugin that provides another option to the existing rails view templates (rhtml and rxml). This template engine has all the power of layouts, partials, and rails helpers but is still editable/styleable in a WYSIWYG editor.
Another major goal it to have the syntax of these attribute directives be very similar to rails helpers so that one could intuitively start using MasterView with little learning curve other than knowing rails. MasterView users can additionally create their own directives to encapsulate custom functionality so the system can be easily extended into specific uses.
MasterView was inspired by Amrita, Kwartz, Tapestry, Zope/PHP TAL, Liquid, and Web Objects but designed with a fresh approach and specifically targetted for rails users.
There are several ways to use MasterView:
- Start with a pure HTML prototype of your site and add directives to the pages to make them live. You can continue to WYSIWYG edit HTML prototype throughout project life cycle. (See screencast for demonstration)
- If you don't have an HTML prototype and want to generate a CRUD application, you may use the MasterView generator which creates a styled CRUD application which you can then change as needed.
- If you already have an application but would like to use MasterView, you can start to use MasterView for new pages. MasterView will co-exist nicely with existing rhtml and you can slowly evolve the site over time.
== Recent changes (Release 0.3.4) - Partial enhancement and maintenance Make values in gen_partial and import_partial retain their page specific values, allowing you to specify different locals, collections, or objects for import_render than you do on gen_partial. Also allows you to reuse the partial multiple times on a page with different values. (thanks James Britt)
Fix rebuild template so that it uses the same list of XHTML empty elements to determine whether to collapse empty elements (thanks to Brian Jordan)
Fixed a problem with CruiseControl where ActionController was not defined when masterview was initialized. (thanks James Britt)
Added mv:generate_all_rhtml rake task which generates all rhtml files to make it more obvious for users who want to generate the rhtml files. Also changed the way gen_partial and import_render work with regards to collections, object, and locals, they now retain the values from the page even after rebuild. This allows you to have different values on each page and even different values on the same page if use partials multiple times on a page.
== Recent changes (Release 0.3.3) - Maintenance release plus auto_copy Added auto copy feature which can be configured to automatically copy static files like stylesheets, images, and javascripts from a non-standard location to the proper location at runtime (under Rails public). This makes it easy to use HTML prototypes and associated files with MasterView eliminating any manual copying.
This release fix adds doctype to generated code, and a bug in gen_replace which outputted <% %> rather than <%= %> (thanks Jon Frisby). Fixed defect in multipart form and stylesheet_link directives (thanks Rajavel Lenin).
Made REXML sax2parser configurable. Generator now creates example for custom admin auth mixin controlling authentication with custom code. (thanks David Koontz)
Fix defect which prevented MasterView to be used with Goldberg or other plugins which alter the view base unless MasterView was configured to generate the rhtml files.
Fix rails runtime detection when running in RadRails which launches using -e
Added rake task mv:clean_mv_rhtml task which removes the MasterView generated rhtml if you have configured MasterView to generate to the file system. Only removes files that it generates leaving other rhtml untouched. This is useful when switching to not generating rhtml mode when it was previously enabled.
== Release 0.3.2 - Maintenance release plus custom admin auth This release addresses a compatibility problem with Rails 1.2 where a view syntax error would not display the normal debug output but instead displayed only a blank screen. Also fixed a parsing problem with multiple parameters in some directives. Added the ability to use custom mixin for authorization to MasterView admin screens. Changed the MasterView generator to use request, flash, and params rather than deprecated @request, @flash, and @params. Tested with Rails 1.2.2
== Details
Author:: Jeff Barczewski Email:: jeff.barczewski (at) gmail (dot) com Primary developers:: Jeff Barczewski, Deb Lewis Website:: http://masterview.org Rubyforge project:: masterview (http://rubyforge.org/projects/masterview) License:: MIT open source license like Rails
=== Video ===
A short video demonstrating use of MasterView converting an HTML prototype into a live application while still allowing round trip WYSIWYG editing. http://masterview.org/media/html-to-live/screencast.html
=== Screenshots, illustrations, other video ===
http://masterview.org/media_list.html
=== Packaging ===
MasterView is distributed as a gem or a plugin. You may install it as a gem and then generate a lightweight plugin which mainly refers to the gem *or* you can simply install as a plugin which is self contained. I personally prefer installing as a gem for ease of management, however if you are running at a shared hosting environment you might not have authority to install this gem so you may install as a self contained plugin.
== Goals
- Create/extend a template engine for rails that would be XHTML friendly and thus could be edited/styled with a WYSIWYG HTML editor even late in development without breaking template. - Keep it simple. DRY. No extra config files, simple syntax with ruby flavor. - Design it specifically for ruby and rails. Use the full power and not be limited in its capabilities over what can be done with ERb - Work nicely with layouts, partials, and rails html helpers. - Reduce complexity, work with existing rails code, no extra view logic or hashes than what is used by ERb. Scaffold generate initial templates or work from existing html prototype. - Reduce the numbers of files, simplifying editing. Define partials and layouts naturallyl right in the template, no need to go to another file. - Preview in browser without running an app. Allow for dummy data in the template so that the page can be viewed and styled independently of the application. - Performance equal to ERb
== Prerequisites
Requires:: No external dependencies
Optional:: tidy (gem) and tidy library if these are installed you can use tidy to cleanup html into valid xhtml for use by MasterView
log4r (gem) if this gem is installed then MasterView will use it for logging otherwise it defaults to using built in Logger.
== User Documentation
MasterView documentation is available online at the MasterView site: http://www.masterview.org and on the rubyforge project http://rubyforge.org/projects/masterview/
== Installation
Detailed installation instructions for installing the masterview gems or a self-contained copy of the plugin is provided in the MasterView Installation Guide.
The Configuration Guide describes how to customize the configuration of the MasterView template engine for your application.
== Usage
The MasterView User's Guide and a complete Directives Reference are provided in the MasterView user documentation. MasterView templates can be created by adding masterview directives markup to an (x)html ptototype, or can be generated for typical Rails controller/view scenarios using the supplied masterview generator developer tool.
A MasterView Admin controller can optionally be activated in your application to assist you during development with creating and managing your templates.
== Next Steps
Visit the online documentation page at http://masterview.org/ for screenshots, illustrations, complete installation and usage information.
We would love to hear your feedback and ideas around this project! Visit the rubyforge project to join the users mailing list or to add yourself to the announce list to receive future announcements. Check out the video to see MasterView in action!
Thanks for your time!!
MasterView Development Team Jeff Barczewski and Deb Lewis
