Saturday, March 6, 2010

Rails Tiny MCE - A Rich Text Editor for ruby on rails

by Sandip Ransing 0 comments

Tags rails tinyMCE

RailsTinyMCE - A Rich Text Editor for ruby on rails

TinyMCE is a javascript rich text editor. It is easy to integrate with blogs, cms, messages and mailers.

Plugin uses jrails(jquery) and paperclip plugin for upload support.

Features

Provides rich text editor
Customisable TinyMCE plugins
Easy to integrate
Supports Image upload & insert
Supports Media upload & Youtube embed
TODO: Document upload plugin

1. Install rails_tiny_mce plugin using

./script/plugin install git://github.com/sandipransing/rails_tiny_mce.git
./script/generate rails_tiny_mce_migration
rake db:migrate

2. Install jrails(jquery) plugin using

./script/plugin install git://github.com/aaronchi/jrails.git

3. Install dependent plugins(if you didn't)

rake rails_tiny_mce:plugins

Above command will copy paperclip, responds_to_parent, will_paginate plugins to vendor/plugins directory.

paperclip git://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip.git
responds_to_parent http://responds-to-parent.googlecode.com/svn/trunk
will_paginate git://github.com/mislav/will_paginate.git

4. In your layout add following lines

<%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>
<%= javascript_include_tiny_mce_if_used %>
<%= tiny_mce if using_tiny_mce? %>

5. Inside controller class on top add following lines

uses_tiny_mce(:options => AppConfig.default_mce_options, :only => [:new, :edit])

This AppConfig.default_mce_options is in config/initializers/tiny_mce_plus_config.rb, you could change the setting there

6. In your view add class mceEditor to text_area

Then append the following to the text area you want to transform into a TinyMCE editor.

:class => "mceEditor"

7. Install file lists

rake rails_tiny_mce:install

will Install following files:

app
  |-- controller
    |-- attachments_controller.rb
  |-- helpers
    |-- remote_link_renderer.rb
  |-- models
    |-- print.rb
    |-- video.rb
  |-- views
    |-- attachments
       |-- _show_attachment_list.html.erb
config
  |-- initializers
    |-- tiny_mce_plus_config.rb
public
  |-- images
    |-- tiny_mce
  |-- javascripts
    |-- tiny_mce

You may custom the config in tiny_mce_plus_config.rb.

Attention Note:

Do not put <p> </p> around the textarea.
If you are using old will_paginate plugin, change the url_for to url_option in remote_link_renderer.rb

Example use:

Create CRUD for post

./script/generate scaffold post title:string text:description
Run Migrations

rake db:migrate
Add following line to posts_controller.rb

uses_tiny_mce(:options => AppConfig.default_mce_options, :only => [:new, :edit])
Open /views/posts/new.html.erb and /views/posts/edit.html.erb
Modifiy following line

<%= f.text_area :description %> to <%= f.text_area :description, :class => "mceEditor" %>