README

= ScaffoldingExtensions

Scaffolding Extensions provides a powerful and simple to use administrative
interface to perform common actions on models.  It has the following features:

* Creates pages for browsing, creating, deleting, displaying, updating, 
  searching, and merging records
* Choose which fields are displayed in the scaffolds and in which order
* Handles associated records for common one-to-many, many-to-one, and
  many-to-many associations
* Extensive support for modifying the display and working of the plugin
* Advanced features such as access control, autocompleting, and eager loading

Scaffolding Extensions is not a code generator, and isn't really scaffolding at
all, as you are not expected to modify the output.  Instead, you use
configuration options inside the model to control the display of the pages.
The scaffolding analogy is misleading, Scaffolding Extensions is not really
scaffolding--it is a completely functional structure that you can easily modify
to better suit your needs.

Scaffolding Extensions currently supports:

* Web Frameworks
  * Rails 2.3.5 (with or without RailsXss plugin)
  * Ramaze 2009.06.12
  * Camping 1.5
  * Sinatra 0.9.4
  * Merb 1.0.4
* Object Relational Mappers
  * ActiveRecord 2.3.5
  * Sequel 3.8.0
* Javascript Libaries (used for Ajax/Autocompleting)
  * Prototype 1.6.0.3
  * JQuery 1.2.3
  
Support for other web frameworks and ORMs can be added, see the
controller_spec.txt and model_spec.txt files for the methods that need to be
defined.

You can get Scaffolding Extensions via git or as a gem:

* git: git://github.com/jeremyevans/scaffolding_extensions.git
* gem: sudo gem install scaffolding_extensions
* demo: http://se-demo.heroku.com
* github: http://github.com/jeremyevans/scaffolding_extensions
* RDoc: http://scaffolding-ext.rubyforge.org
* Bug Tracker: http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?atid=22169&group_id=5726&func=browse
* Forum: http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=22403

== Quick Start

The recommended use of the plugin is to execute:

  scaffold_all_models
  
inside of a controller.  We'll assume the path to the controller is /admin.

Then go to the index page for the controller (e.g. http://website/admin).  
You'll see a link to a management page for each of your models.  Each
management page has links to browse, create, delete, edit, show, search, and
merge pages for the model. The pages are usable right away, but you'll want to
add some configuration code to your models to specify the default names to
display in select boxes, attributes to show on the forms, associations to show,
whether to use select boxes or autocompleting text boxes, etc..

== Customization

The main reason to use this plugin are the features and extent of customization
it provides.  Customization is done by adding methods and instance variables
to the model class itself. Here are some common customizations:

  class Album < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_and_belongs_to_many :artists
    belongs_to :genre
    @scaffold_fields = [:name, :rating, :genre, :numtracks]
    @scaffold_select_order = 'name'
    @scaffold_column_names = {:numtracks=>'Number of Tracks'}
    @scaffold_use_auto_complete = true
    def scaffold_name
      name[0...50]
    end
  end

@scaffold_fields determines which fields are shown in the new, edit, and search
forms (which use the order specified).  It should be a list of symbols.  If you
want some pages to show more fields than others, you can define variables such
as @scaffold_edit_fields or @scaffold_search_fields to override the defaults
for certain pages.

@scaffold_select_order determines which order is used in the SQL ORDER BY
clause when displaying a list of objects (for example, when choosing an object
to edit).

@scaffold_column_names specifies the visible names for each attribute.

@scaffold_use_auto_complete turns on autocompleting for the model, instead
of using select boxes (necessary for a decent response time if you have a large
number of records). See the advanced.txt for more autocompleting options.

scaffold_name is an instance method that determines the name to use for each
album inside those select boxes.

Notice in this case that genre was specified.  In this case, our schema has 
genre_id as a foreign key to the genres table.  If you specified genre_id,
you'd get a usual text input box for the foreign key integer.  If you specify
genre (the name of the belongs_to association), instead of a text input box,
you will get a select box with all genres, allowing you to pick one.  It will
use the @scaffold_select_order variable and scaffold_name method in the Genre 
model to format the select box (though this can be overridden with the
@scaffold_genre_select_order_association variable in the Album model).

If you have @scaffold_auto_complete_options set in the Genre model (or
@scaffold_genre_association_use_auto_complete set in the Album model), there
will be an autocompleting text box instead of a select box (though since there
aren't that many genres, you would probably be better off with a select box in
this case).

There are a ton of other customization options:

* Override the input widget type and widget options per attribute
* Choose which associations to display on the edit screen of a model
* Choose which associations to eagerly load when displaying select boxes for
  the model
* Set the number of records returned in searching or browsing
* Specify different fields used in each type of scaffold (e.g. certain fields
  can only be viewed, not edited)
* Control access to the model via a session variable (e.g. so a user can only
  see objects with a matching user_id)

Consult advanced.txt and/or the RDoc if you would like more information on
these (and many other options).

== Testing

See the testing.txt file for details on the plugin's automated test suite and
Rails functional testing support.

== Questions?

Please post on the RubyForge forum if you have any questions about Scaffolding
Extensions.