An easy way to create flexible menus for Rails apps.
Installation
Add this line to your Gemfile and run bundle install
:
gem 'structured_menus'
Next, create a configuration file in config/initializers
, probably called structured_menus.rb
because convention, and add the following to it:
StructuredMenus::Configurator.configure do |config|
end
Quick Start
Once you've done the above, create app/menus/menu.yml
, and add the following to it:
- name: FAQ
icon: question
link: /faq
In the view in which you want to display the menu, add this code:
<%= Rails.menus.show :menu, :dashboard, current_user %>
You can substitute :dashboard
for :dropdown
if you want a Bootstrap dropdown menu instead; if you don't have a current_user
method, use nil
.
Continue reading for more detailed usage options.
Usage
StructuredMenus enables you to create menus for your app by writing YAML files in (by default) app/menus
. Each file is a menu; each item in the file
becomes an item on your menu, displayed according to the adapter (more on that later) and options you specify. Such a file might look like this:
- name: Admin
icon: cogs
link: /admin
if: 'lambda { |u| u&.has_role?(:admin) }'
- name: CRM
icon: users
link: /crm
- name: Orders
icon: money-bill-alt
link: /orders
Save that as mymenu.yml
, and you'll be able to call Rails.menus.show :mymenu, :dashboard, current_user
to pop it up anywhere in your app.
Adapters
Adapters are the bits that control how the menu is actually displayed. There are two included by default: :dashboard
and :dropdown
. Both are
designed to work with Bootstrap and FontAwesome (yes, I'm opinionated). Each adapter supports different options - see the definitions in
lib/structured_menus/adapters
for details on what they are.
-
Dashboard is designed to be a full-screen main menu type thing, probably for apps with lots of navigation. The example menu YAML shown above
looks like this when shown (some custom CSS - the topbar is not part of the menu):
Use :dashboard
in your call to Rails.menus.show
to get this adapter.
-
Dropdown is, well, a Bootstrap dropdown menu. It doesn't include icons by default, but you can make it do so if you want them. The same YAML
looks like this with the dropdown adapter:
Use :dropdown
in your call to Rails.menus.show
to get this adapter.
Custom adapters
If those two don't suit your needs, you can write your own custom adapter. Essentially, this needs to emulate one of the two stock adapters, in that:
- It must respond to
#show
- Calls to
#show
must respond with the string of raw HTML that you want to render.
For reference, here's what the dashboard adapter looks like:
module StructuredMenus::Adapters
class DashboardAdapter
include ActionView::Helpers::UrlHelper
include ActionView::Helpers::OutputSafetyHelper
def self.show(menu, user, **options)
inst = new
width = options[:width] || 4
cards = menu.map do |i|
next unless !i['if'] || instance_eval(i['if']).call(user)
cls = options[:class] || 'dashboard-menu-card'
inst.raw("<div class=\"#{cls}\">#{inst.link_to inst.raw("<i class=\"fas fa-#{i['icon']}\"></i> #{i['name']}"), i['link']}</div>")
end.compact
inst.raw(cards.in_groups_of(12 / width).map(&:compact).map do |g|
'<div class="row">' + g.map { |c| "<div class=\"col-md-#{12 / width}\">#{c}</div>" }.join("\n") + '</div>'
end.join("\n"))
end
end
end
The parameters that will be passed to #show
are as follows:
menu
- a parsed YAML file, in the form of an array. Each element is a hash representing a single menu item as specified in the file.user
is the value passed to Rails.menus.show
, which should be a reference to the current user. This can be nil
.**options
is a hash of additional options - it's up to you what you want to support. Look at the adapter files in lib/structured_menus/adapters
to see the options that the stock adapters support.
Once you've written your adapter, tell structured_menus about it by adding it to the configuration file:
StructuredMenus::Configurator.configure do |config|
config.adapters << YourCustomAdapterClass
end
Contributions
Welcome. Ping me a PR. For large changes you should probably open an issue first to discuss.
License
Available under the terms of the MIT license.