librelist archives

Re: [nesta] Article / Summary list from a specific sub-category

From:

Stefan Goodchild

Date:

2011-06-15 @ 15:17

On 15 Jun 2011, at 15:54, Graham Ashton wrote:

> On 15 Jun 2011, at 15:28, Stefan Goodchild wrote:
> 
>> I'm a massive newb with Nesta / Sinatra though fairly experienced with 
Rails so don't really know where you're suggesting I put this? I'm 
guessing not in the view HAML file as A) that's icky and B) it doesn't 
work! :-)

> Looking at the documentation menu on nestacms.com, I can see why you've 
not discovered how to create an app.rb file (in which you can define your 
own Sinatra routes/actions). I clearly haven't explained how to extend 
Nesta that well yet (though I've just added it to the todo list).


Took me a little while but I think I'm getting it now. Used to overriding 
things in Rails anyway it's just sometimes it's too similar! But some docs
would be handy of course :-)

> You said (in an earlier message) that your portfolio page has its own 
view. Do you mean it's got its own template in ./views, or that you've 
written it as a Haml page (i.e. content/pages/portfolio.haml)?

I've tried both ways, both in a ./views/portfolio.haml template and in 
./pages/portfolio.haml. Same error in either.

NameError at /portfolio
uninitialized constant Haml::Engine::Page

> Unless the layout is significantly different to the other pages on your 
site I'd probably go with the content/pages/portfolio.haml approach, and 
then put a couple of Ruby loops inline in that template. You can add 
helper methods to the app.rb file (inside the helpers block) to make the 
code in the Haml file cleaner.

I think I'll eventually need it to have it's own Template in ./views due 
to how it will be laid out but at the moment I'm simply working with some 
dummy data and the standard theme and templates to get the information 
appearing and arranged how I want it.

> If none of this is making sense, give me access to your Git repo and 
I'll send you a patch illustrating what I mean.


Will do so if this round of emails doesn't get me there :-)

Much obliged,

Stefan

On 15 Jun 2011, at 16:17, Stefan Goodchild wrote:

> NameError at /portfolio
> uninitialized constant Haml::Engine::Page

Try referring to it as Nesta::Page.... - that should sort it.

On 15 Jun 2011, at 16:31, Graham Ashton wrote:

> On 15 Jun 2011, at 16:17, Stefan Goodchild wrote:
> 
>> NameError at /portfolio
>> uninitialized constant Haml::Engine::Page
> 
> Try referring to it as Nesta::Page.... - that should sort it.

No more error but not finding pages. I tried:

=Nesta::Page.find_by_path('portfolio').pages.length

and

=Nesta::Page.find_by_path('portfolio/web').pages.length
=Nesta::Page.find_by_path('portfolio/visuals').pages.length

in /pages/portfolio.haml and it returns 0

All the articles under portfolio are listed as expected as per default 
NestaCMS behaviour.

I've added you to my repo on Github so feel free to take a look but 
there's nothing much in there :-) Would be interested in how you would 
move the logic into app.rb as you mentioned earlier.

Rgds, Stefan

On 15 Jun 2011, at 16:47, Stefan Goodchild wrote:
> 
> No more error but not finding pages. I tried:
> 
> =Nesta::Page.find_by_path('portfolio').pages.length

The wasn't really a problem with the code, more with expectations.

If you have pages stored on disk like this:

  content/pages/portfolio.mdown
  content/pages/portfolio/web.mdown
  content/pages/portfolio/visuals.mdown

then there's nothing in that file structure to indicate that 
portfolio.mdown is a category page. They're just three totally independent
web pages.

There isn't much magic in Nesta; you need to tell it what you want it to 
do. To convert /portfolio into a category page you need to put a page in 
the portfolio category. You do that by adding meta data to the page that 
you want to put into the category.

I've just pushed a couple of commits to your repo. The first one puts web 
and visuals into the portfolio category, adding this line to the top of 
portfolio/web.mdown and portfolio/visuals.mdown:

  Categories: portfolio

http://nestacms.com/docs/creating-content/metadata-reference#categories

Scanning through Nesta's docs, I'm not seeing anything that walks you 
through how categories work, which is a bit of a cock up on my part.

> Would be interested in how you would move the logic into app.rb as you 
mentioned earlier.

My second commit to your repo added an app.rb file, with a view helper in.
Here's the patch in case anybody else was following along:

+++ b/app.rb
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+module Nesta
+  class App
+    helpers do
+      def pages_in(path)
+        Nesta::Page.find_by_path(path).pages
+      end
+    end
+  end
+end

And this how you use it in the Haml file:

--- a/content/pages/portfolio.haml
+++ b/content/pages/portfolio.haml
@@ -2,10 +2,10 @@
 
 %p This is my work, all I've done that's fit to print
 
-=Nesta::Page.find_by_path('portfolio').pages.length
+= pages_in('portfolio').length
 
 %ul
-  -Nesta::Page.find_by_path('portfolio/web').pages.each do |page|
-    =page.heading
+  - pages_in('portfolio/web').each do |page|
+    = page.heading

Hope that helps...

Cheers,
Graham

> My second commit to your repo added an app.rb file, with a view helper in. 

Thanks for that, makes sense how that abstracts it out and away from the 
view which feels nicer however it's still not behaving as I'd expect.

I've pushed some more content into my repo including four pages into the 
'portfolio/web' folder with the category 'portfolio/web' in the header of 
the file like so.

Categories: portfolio/web

When I use your helper in portfolio.haml

  - pages_in('portfolio/web').each do |page|
    = page.heading

I get no results at all but if I visit the "portfolio/web" page it lists 
them correctly so the pages themselves are categorised correctly. Am I 
missing something obvious?

Thanks for you help so far, it's appreciated :-)

Rgds, Stefan

On 19 Jun 2011, at 20:30, Stefan Goodchild wrote:

> When I use your helper in portfolio.haml
> 
>  - pages_in('portfolio/web').each do |page|
>    = page.heading
> 
> I get no results at all but if I visit the "portfolio/web" page it lists
them correctly so the pages themselves are categorised correctly. Am I 
missing something obvious?

Not obvious, no. I had to scan the code in the nesta gem to spot it.

The Page#pages method (which I used in the helper I wrote for you) filters
out articles (i.e. pages with a date, or blog posts). I've added a new 
helper for you which iterates over the articles instead:

      def articles_in(path)
        Nesta::Page.find_by_path(path).articles
      end

Cheers,
Graham

On 19 Jun 2011, at 21:36, Graham Ashton wrote:

> On 19 Jun 2011, at 20:30, Stefan Goodchild wrote:
> 
>> When I use your helper in portfolio.haml
>> 
>> - pages_in('portfolio/web').each do |page|
>>   = page.heading
>> 
>> I get no results at all but if I visit the "portfolio/web" page it 
lists them correctly so the pages themselves are categorised correctly. Am
I missing something obvious?
> 
> Not obvious, no. I had to scan the code in the nesta gem to spot it.
> 
> The Page#pages method (which I used in the helper I wrote for you) 
filters out articles (i.e. pages with a date, or blog posts). I've added a
new helper for you which iterates over the articles instead:
> 
>      def articles_in(path)
>        Nesta::Page.find_by_path(path).articles
>      end

Brilliant.

I did wonder about the difference between pages and articles actually, 
thank you for your help. I can get on with my website now :-)

Regards, Stefan

On 15 Jun 2011, at 16:47, Stefan Goodchild wrote:

> I tried:
> 
> = Nesta::Page.find_by_path('portfolio').pages.length

I can't see any reason why that would give you 0.

> I've added you to my repo on Github so feel free to take a look but 
there's nothing much in there :-) Would be interested in how you would 
move the logic into app.rb as you mentioned earlier.

Okay, I'll take a look and get back to you. It won't be today though I'm 
afraid; I'm up to my ears in client work.

Graham