Navigator

Enhances Rails with a DSL for menu navigation.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Requirements
• Setup
• Usage
  • Unordered List (simple)
  • Unordered List (with attributes)
  • Unordered List (with multiple data attributes)
  • Nav (with links)
  • Foundation Menu
  • Bootstrap Dropdown
  • Menu Helpers
• Customization
• Development
• Tests
• Versioning
• Code of Conduct
• Contributions
• License
• History
• Credits

Features

• Provides a DSL for building navigation menus.

• Supports auto-detection/highlighting of active menu items based on current path (customizable for non-path usage too).

• Supports sub-menus, nested tags, HTML attributes, etc.

• Supports the following HTML tags:

  • div

  • section

  • header

  • h1 - h6

  • nav

  • ul

  • li

  • a

  • img

  • b

  • em

  • s

  • small

  • span

  • strong

  • sub

  • sup

  • form

  • label

  • select

  • option

  • input

  • button

• Provides link, image, and item convenience methods for succinct ways to build commonly used menu elements.

Requirements

1. Ruby

2. Ruby on Rails

Setup

To install, run:

gem install navigator

Add the following to your Gemfile:

gem "navigator"

Usage

The following are examples using the navigation view helper:

Unordered List (simple)

Code:

navigation do
  item "Dashboard", "/dashboard"
  item "News", "/posts"
end

Result:

<ul>
  <li><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
  <li><a href="/posts">Posts</a></li>
</ul>

Unordered List (with attributes)

Code:

navigation "ul", attributes: {class: "nav"} do
  item "Dashboard", "/dashboard", item_attributes: {class: "active"}
  item "News", "/posts"
end

Result:

<ul class="nav">
  <li class="active"><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
  <li><a href="/posts">Posts</a></li>
</ul>

Unordered List (with multiple data attributes)

Code:

navigation do
  item "Home", "/home", item_attributes: {data: {id: 1, type: "public"}}
end

Result:

<ul>
  <li data-id="1" data-type="public"><a href="/home">Home</a></li>
</ul>

TIP: Nested data– attributes can be applied to any menu item in the same manner as Rails view helpers.

Nav (with links)

Code:

navigation "nav" do
  a "Dashboard", attributes: {href: "/dashboard"}
  a "News", attributes: {href: "/posts"}
end

Result:

<nav>
  <a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a>
  <a href="/posts">Posts</a>
</nav>

Foundation Menu

Code:

navigation "nav", attributes: {class: "top-bar", "data-topbar" => nil} do
  ul attributes: {class: "title-area"} do
    li attributes: {class: "name"} do
      h1 do
        a "Demo", attributes: {href: "/home"}
      end
    end
  end

  section attributes: {class: "top-bar-section"} do
    ul attributes: {class: "left"} do
      item "Home", "/"
      item "About", "/about"
    end

    ul attributes: {class: "right"} do
      item "v1.0.0", '#'
    end

    ul attributes: {class: "right"} do
      item "Login", "/login", link_attributes: {class: "button tiny round"}
    end
  end
end

Result:

<nav class="top-bar" data-topbar="">
  <ul class="title-area">
    <li class="name">
      <h1><a href="/" class="active">Demo</a></h1>
    </li>
  </ul>

  <section class="top-bar-section">
    <ul class="left">
      <li class="active"><a href="/">Home</a></li>
      <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
    </ul>

    <ul class="right">
      <li><a href="#">v1.0.0</a></li>
    </ul>

    <ul class="right">
      <li><a class="button tiny round" href="/login">Login</a></li>
    </ul>
  </section>
</nav>

Bootstrap Dropdown

Code:

navigation "nav" do
  item "Dashboard", admin_dashboard_path
  li attributes: {class: "dropdown"} do
    a "Manage", attributes: {href: "#", class: "dropdown-toggle", "data-toggle" => "dropdown"} do
      b attributes: {class: "caret"}
    end
    ul attributes: {class: "dropdown-menu"} do
      item "Dashboard", admin_dashboard_path
      item "Users", admin_users_path
    end
  end
end

Result:

<ul class="nav">
  <li><a href="/admin/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
  <li class="dropdown">
    <a data-toggle="dropdown" class="dropdown-toggle" href="#">
      Manage
      <b class="caret"></b>
    </a>
    <ul class="dropdown-menu">
      <li><a href="/admin/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
      <li><a href="/admin/users">Users</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

Menu Helpers

There are several convenience methods, in addition to the standard HTML tags, that can make for shorter lines of code. The following describes each:

When building links, the default is:

navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  a "Home", attributes: {href: home_path}
end

…​but can be written as:

navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  link "Home", home_path
end

When building images, the default is:

navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  img attributes: {src: "https://placehold.it/50x50", alt: "Example"}
end

.but can be written as:

navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  image "https://placehold.it/50x50", "Example"
end

When building menu items, the default is:

navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  li do
    a "Home", attributes: {href: home_path}
  end
end

…​but can be written as:

navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  item "Home", "/dashboard"
end

These are just a few, simple, examples of what can be achieved. See the specs for additional usage and customization.

Customization

The navigation view helper can accept an optional Navigator::TagActivator instance.

Code:

activator = Navigator::TagActivator.new search_value: request.env["PATH_INFO"]

navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  link "Home", home_path
  link "About", about_path
end

Result:

<nav>
  <a href="/home" class="active">Home</a>
  <a href="/about" class="active">About</a>
</nav>

This is the default behavior for all navigation menus and is how menu items automaticaly get the “active” class when the item URL (in this case “/home”) matches the request.env[“PATH_INFO"] to indicate current page/active tab.

Navigator::TagActivator instances can be configured as follows:

• search_key = Optional. The HTML tag attribute to search for. Default: :href.

• search_value = Required. The value to match against the search_key value in order to update the value of the target_key. Default: nil.

• target_key = Optional. The HTML tag attribute key value to update when the search_value and search_key value match. Default: :class.

• target_value = Optional. The value to be applied to the target_key value. If no value exists, then the value is added. Otherwise, if a value exists then the value is appended to the existing value. Default: “active”.

This customization allows for more sophisticated detection/updating of active HTML tags. For example, the example code (above) could be rewritten to use data attributes and customized styles.

Code:

activator = Navigator::TagActivator.new search_key: "data-id",
                                        search_value: "123",
                                        target_key: "data-style"
                                        target_value: "current"

navigation "nav", activator: activator do
  link "Home", home_path, attributes: {data: {id: "123", data-style="info"}}
  link "About", about_path attributes: {data: {id: "789"}}
end

Result:

<nav>
  <a href="/home" data-id="123" data-style="info current">Home</a>
  <a href="/about" data-id="789">About</a>
</nav>

Lastly, the search value can be a regular expression to make things easier when dealing with complicated routes, sub- menus, etc.

Code:

profile_activator = Navigator::TagActivator.new search_value: /^profile.+/

navigation do
  item "Dashboard", dashboard_path
  li activator: profile_activator do
    link "Profile", '#'

    ul do
      item "Addresses", profile_addresses_path
      item "Emails", profile_emails_path
    end
  end
end

Result:

<ul>
  <li><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
  <li class="active">
    <a href="#">Profile</a>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="profile/addresses">Addresses</a></li>
      <li><a href="profile/emails">Emails</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

Assuming either the Addresses or Emails menu item was clicked, the Profile menu item would be active due to the regular expression (i.e. /^profile.+/) matching one of the the `profile/ paths.

Development

To contribute, run:

git clone https://github.com/bkuhlmann/navigator.git
cd navigator
bin/setup

You can also use the IRB console for direct access to all objects:

bin/console

Tests

To test, run:

bundle exec rake

To test the dummy application, run:

cd spec/dummy
bin/rails server

Versioning

Read Semantic Versioning for details. Briefly, it means:

• Major (X.y.z) - Incremented for any backwards incompatible public API changes.

• Minor (x.Y.z) - Incremented for new, backwards compatible, public API enhancements/fixes.

• Patch (x.y.Z) - Incremented for small, backwards compatible, bug fixes.

Code of Conduct

Please note that this project is released with a CODE OF CONDUCT. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

Contributions

Read CONTRIBUTING for details.

License

Read LICENSE for details.

History

Read CHANGES for details.

Credits

Engineered by Brooke Kuhlmann.