navlinks

= Very light-weight implementation for navigation links

= Simple navigation (HOW-TO)

=== Install

gem install navlinks --source http://gemcutter.org

=== First add navigation areas to the layout

==== app/views/layouts/application.html.erb

• <%= nav_link_to :home, root_path %>
• <%= nav_link_to :foo, foo_path %>

  <div id="content">
    <%= yield %>
  </div>
</body>

=== Next, label what views belong to what nav areas

Suppose we have following pages:

• A home page that is rendered by +pages/home.html.erb+ template and that we want to belong to 'home' nav area.
• A page where we show a Foo resource that is rendered by +foos/show.html.erb+ template and that we want to belong to 'foo' nav area.

Easy! Just assign the nav-areas at the top of the views like this:

==== app/views/pages/home.html.erb <%- self.nav_area = :home -%>

==== app/views/foos/show.html.erb

<%- self.nav_area = :foo -%>

=== Done!

Now when someone is viewing the +pages/home.html.erb+ template, the 'home' anchor tag will have a class +current+. If someone is viewing a +foos/show.html.erb+ template, then the 'foo' anchor tag will have a class +current+. When viewing any other page, however, both of the navigation anchors will not have any classes.

= Localization

+navlinks+ supports common localization but also allows some tricks. Suppose the localization file is as follows:

==== config/locate/en.yml en: navigation: home: Go home home_current: At home

This causes the 'home' area description to be usually 'Go home'. However if the user is looking at a page that belongs to 'home' nav area, it will display 'At home'. Cool, huh?

= Decoration Override

By default the plugin decorates the 'current' area with brackets. It is possible to override this behavior by overriding +decorate_current_label+ method:

==== app/helpers/application_helper.rb

module ApplicationHelper

# causes the current navigation label to be described as:
# * home *
def decorate_current_label( current_label )
  "* #{current_label} *"
end

end

Now instead of [ home ] you will see * home *

= Contact

Feel free to contact me with any questions/comments!