ActsAsWizard

Build dynamic wizards on the web with very little code. Sticking to convention over configuration, I think that this plugin will be useful and familiar to seasoned Rails developers, but easy enough for the new Rails developers, too.

I hope the example makes the code self explanatory.

I would also love for someone to come along and help me write tests for this. Not using TDD goes totally against my normal coding style. This started as a spike, and morphed its way into code I didn't want to throw away. Now I've gotten so excited over it that I just want to get it out there for feedback.

Example

app/models/employee.rb

The symbols passed to acts_as_wizard must correspond

to the models that are the pages, and are in desired

display order

class Employee < ActiveRecord::Base acts_as_wizard :personal_information, :work_information end

app/models/personal_informtion.rb

acts_as_wizard_page is really an alias for belongs_to

but it makes the functionality clear

class PersonalInformation < ActiveRecord::Base acts_as_wizard_page :employee end

app/controllers/employees_controller.rb

the controller has a few notable functions that need to be called

also notice the page instance variable. That is important

for the view helper methods

class EmployeesController < ApplicationController def new @employee = Employee.new @employee.save redirect_to edit_employee_url(@employee) end

def edit 
    @employee = Employee.find(params[:id])
    @page = @employee.get_wizard_page
end

def update 
    @employee = Employee.find(params[:id])
    @page = @employee.get_wizard_page
    if @page.update_attributes(params[@employee.get_current_wizard_step])
        @employee.switch_wizard_page(params[:direction])
        @employee.save
        redirect_to :action => :edit
    else
        render :action => :edit
    end
end

end

app/views/employees/edit.html.erb

notice the wizard partial render and the previous and next button functions

<%=javascript_include_tag :defaults %> <% form_for(@employee) do |f| -%> <%= error_messages_for :page %>

<hr/> 
    <table class="controls"> 
        <tr> 
            <td>
                <%= previous_wizard_button @employee %>
            </td> 
            <td> 
                <%= next_wizard_button %> 
            </td> 
        </tr> 
    </table> 

<% end -%>

app/views/employee_wizard_pages/_personal_information.html.erb

notice the name of the folder corresponds to the wizard model name

and the template file corresponds to the name of the page model

notice the text_field tag is a little different

Personal Information

<%= wizard_page_text_field :name %>

The wizard model doesn't have to hold any information because the pages belong to it

class CreateEmployees < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up create_table :employees do |t| t.integer :state

  t.timestamps
end

end

def self.down drop_table :employees end end

Migration for a wizard page holds all the information for the wizard

class CreatePersonalInformations < ActiveRecord::Migration def self.up create_table :personal_informations do |t| t.integer :employee_id t.string :name

  t.timestamps
end

end

def self.down drop_table :personal_informations end end

Thank You

Adam Klunick at Quantiverge, Inc. for having faith that there had to be better way to make a wizard, and for trying Rails even when he had never written Ruby.

Mike Hagedorn for writing a wizard how-to for Pragmatic Studios - Advanced Rails Recipes. The recipe put me on this path.

Copyright (c) 2008 Amos L. King, released under the MIT license