Content-Driven Web Applications with Magnolia CMS and Ruby on Rails

Content-Driven
Web Applications with
Magnolia and Ruby on Rails
Patrik Metzmacher, Dievision
http://www.dievision.de

I’m not really talking about
Ruby or Rails

Creating an environment which
clients enjoy to
work with
and
(our) developers love
to develop for.

The Approach

How to run a Rails app within Magnolia

Developing a minimal
Magnolia/Rails application

Testing

The Rails Ecosystem

Clean, consistent MVC architecture

Same paradigms for
content- and application-driven websites

File-based conﬁguration and
application data
Work with version control and
your favorite text editors/IDEs

Invent as few wheels as possible

Leverage ready-made web-focussed solutions,
best practices and a large development community

Clie
nt-s
perf ide
Dependency orm
E-Mails opti ance
ching Management ing miza
Ca U nit Test tion

Templating ce Reu Integration
an
m g sable
or rin Comp Testing
P erf ito onents Hel pers/
on
M Ut ilites
Prototyping

/CSS Scalab
HTML ORM ility
roce ssors JavaScript
Prep Integration
F orms
AJAX
IDE/Editor Validation Dep
Sec loym
support VC urit ent
M y

Developers Clients

JCR
Repository

Hierarchical NoSQL-Store
that can be edited by
normal people.

SQL
Database

JCR
Repository

…

100% Java-based
Ruby implementation

Mature

Fastest Ruby 1.8.7
implementation

Web apps can be deployed in
standard Servlet containers

JRuby Rack Filter

Rack Connector

Rack Web Application

Rack Filter
Aggregation Filter
Rendering Filter
Magnolia Filter Chain

Rails “Base” controller providing
content, page, state objects
Mapping between Magnolia Templates
and Rails Layouts

Rails Application

conﬁg/routes.rb app/views/layouts/homepage.html.erb

<html>
<head>
<title>
<%= cms_out :title %>
MyApp::Application.routes.draw do </title>
</head>
match "/(*cmspath)" => <body>
"sinicum/controllers/base#index" <%= main_bar %>
<h1>
end <%= cms_out :title %>
</h1>
<%= edit_bar :dialog =>
"title_dialog" %>
</body>
</html>

Model View Controller

File-based
conﬁguration

ActiveRecord-like JCR/
Object Mapper

JCR-Wrapper with Helpers to match the Magnolia/Rails “Base”
Ruby Semantics Taglib Controller

Utilities: Scheduler, Imaging, Testing, etc.

Magnolia Module for JRuby/Rack integration

Developing a minimal
Magnolia/Rails application

app/models/templates/press_release.rb

class Templates::PressRelease
include Sinicum::Jcr::Base

def title_homepage
title_short || title
end
end



def title_homepage
end

def title_short
@content[:title_short]
end

def title
@content[:title]
end
end

conﬁg/routes.rb

MyApp::Application.routes.draw do

match "/en" => "home#index"
match "/(*cmspath)" => "sinicum/controllers/base#index"

end

app/controllers/home_controller.rb

class HomeController < Sinicum::Controllers::Base

def index
@releases = Templates::PressRelease.for_homepage
cms_render
end

end

app/views/layouts/homepage.html.erb

<ul>
<% @releases.each do |release| -%>
<li>
<%= link_to release.title_homepage, release %>
</li>
<% end -%>
</ul>



def self.for_homepage
where(:show_on_homepage => true).
order("release_date desc", "order_day").
limit(2)
end

def title_homepage
end
end



scope :ordered, order("release_date desc", "order_day")
scope :for_homepage, ordered.where(:show_on_homepage => true).limit(2)

def title_homepage
end
end

Consistent
Editable
Version-Controlable
Tied to the models

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sv:node sv:name="box_picture_teaser_large_item_dialog" xmlns:sv="http://
www.jcp.org/jcr/sv/1.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<sv:property sv:name="jcr:primaryType" sv:type="Name">
<sv:value>mgnl:contentNode</sv:value>
</sv:property>
<sv:property sv:name="jcr:mixinTypes" sv:type="Name">
<sv:value>mix:lockable</sv:value>
</sv:property>
<sv:property sv:name="jcr:uuid" sv:type="String">
<sv:value>92a944c5-c5b3-423c-af93-34a7b948c5be</sv:value>
</sv:property>
<sv:node sv:name="MetaData">
<sv:property sv:name="jcr:primaryType" sv:type="Name">
<sv:value>mgnl:metaData</sv:value>
</sv:property>
<sv:property sv:name="mgnl:activated" sv:type="Boolean">
<sv:value>true</sv:value>
</sv:property>
<sv:property sv:name="mgnl:activatorid" sv:type="String">
<sv:value>username</sv:value>
</sv:property>
<sv:property sv:name="mgnl:authorid" sv:type="String">
<sv:value>authorname</sv:value>
</sv:property>

db/migrate/20100916101243_create_product_registration.rb

class CreateProductRegistration < ActiveRecord::Migration
def self.up
create_table :product_registrations do |t|
t.column :first_name, :string
t.column :last_name, :string
t.column :email, :string
t.column :date_of_birth, :date
t.column :date_of_purchase, :date
t.column :point_of_sale, :string
t.column :roles, :string
t.column :newsletter_subscription, :boolean
end
end

def self.down
drop_table :product_registrations
end
end

db/jcr/module/dialogs/video_dialog.yml

video_dialog:

height: 500

tab_main:

title:
controlType: edit
label: Title

video_file:
controlType: uuidLink
description: Link to the video file
repository: dms
label: Video

app/views/layouts/homepage.html.erb

<ul>
<% @releases.each do |release| -%>
<li>
<%= link_to release.title_homepage, release %>
</li>
<% end -%>
</ul>

spec/views/layouts/homepage.html.erb_spec.rb

require 'spec_helper'

describe "layouts/homepage.html.erb" do

it "displays the title of a press release" do
render
rendered.should contain("Sustainability World Index")
end

end


require 'spec_helper'


releases = [Templates::PressRelease.new(
:title => "Lorem ipsum Sustainability World Index dolor sit amet",
:title_short => "Sustainability World Index"
)]
assign(:releases, releases)

render
end
end



before(:each) do
assign(:releases, [Factory(:sustainability_release)])
end

render
end
end

spec/factories/templates/press_releases.rb

Factory.define :sustainability_release,
:class => Templates::PressRelease do |r|
r.title "Lorem ipsum Sustainability World Index dolor sit amet",
r.title_short "Sustainability World Index"
end

Capistrano for deployment

Haml/Sass for better
HTML templates and CSS

NewRelic for performance monitoring

Many high-quality Gems and Plugins

Very productive and “scalable” environment

Performance is just ﬁne

Save/Reload vs. Save/Compile/Restart/Reload

You can refactor in a dynamic language

Collaboration is easier when everyone uses the
same tools

Content-Driven Web Applications with Magnolia CMS and Ruby on Rails

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