FCKeditor

[Nicola Piccinini]

Hi,

I have (mostly working) code for FCKeditor ( http://www.fckeditor.net/ ) integration and I'd like to discuss here what Ive done.

First of all, my aim is to not reinvent the wheel, so I'm using the FCKeditor plugin ( http://rubyforge.org/projects/fckeditorp/ ) .
It provides some helpers to substitute textarea with rich editors (in ajax way or not) and in _form.rhtml one can write something like:

[...]
<% elsif controller.fckeditor_column? column.name %>
        <%= fckeditor_textarea(@model_underscore, column.name, :ajax => true, :toolbarSet => 'Basic', :rows => '20', :cols => '70') %>
<% else %>
[...]

Moreover, form should be prepared for FCKeditor, in _edit.rhtml:
<%
  editors = { :series => ['description', 'comment1'] }
  before = ""
  editors.keys.each do |e|
    editors[e].each do |f|
      before += fckeditor_before_js(e, f)
    end
  end

  remote_form_for @model_underscore.to_sym, @streamlined_item,
            :url => { :action => "update", :id=>@streamlined_item, :from_window => true},
            :before => before do |form|
%>

(here we can write a patch for FCKeditor plugin which doesn't have a fckeditor_remote_form_for helper, hence the work for constructing :before parameter copied from the fckeditor_remote_form_tag helper)

Unfortunately there is an issue. When the edit Prototype windows is opened, it takes its content from an url and _doesn't_ evaluate scripts and I haven't found an option to change this behaviour (this doesn't mean that this option actually exists :-) ). This is, in fact, very similar to the problems Nelson Silvan had integrating TinyMCE ( http://wiki.streamlinedframework.org/streamlined/show/TinyMCE ).
Anyway, observing that everything works well when one clicks on "Edit" in a show windows, I've found a workaround:
managing the windows opening in the same way of the windows update.

In streamlined.js, open_window_from_url becomes:
    open_local_window_from_url: function(title_prefix, url, model) {
            if (model == null) {
                model = "new"
            }
            // create an empty window
            Streamlined.Windows.open_local_window(title_prefix, '', model);
            // update its content
            new Ajax.Request(url, {
            method: "get",
            evalScripts: true
        });
    }
Consequently, in _list.rhtml (around line 37):
    <%= link_to_function image_tag('edit_16.png', {:alt => 'Edit', :title => 'Edit', :border => '0'}), "Streamlined.Windows.open_local_window_from_url('Edit', '#{url_for(:action => 'edit', :id => item.id, :from_window => true)}', #{item.id})" %>
with a "fake" :from_window param. The same change should be done for the 'Show' icon.

These modifications could potentially simplify the streamlined_controller because there is no need to distinguish rendering depending on  request.xhr? && params[:from_window] condition but I don't know how this scales when more window/transition types will be added (
http://groups.google.com/group/streamlined/browse_frm/thread/6298ed8f41c7c1f9/19e644408a25a439#19e644408a25a439
). By the way: when?

I prefer FCKeditor to TinyMCE because, as far as I know, with TinyMCE there isn't an open/Ruby file browser.
FCKeditor file browser ( http://wiki.fckeditor.net/Developer%27s_Guide/Configuration/Built_in_File_Browser ) integrates with streamlined naturally (without "core" changes).

Any comments will be appreciated, best regards
--
Nicola Piccinini -- http://superfluo.org

[Nicola Piccinini]

> (here we can write a patch for FCKeditor plugin which doesn't have a
> fckeditor_remote_form_for helper, hence the work for constructing
> :before parameter copied from the fckeditor_remote_form_tag helper)

Scott Rutherford (http://blog.caronsoftware.com) is going to add this
helper in the next release of the plugin :-) . Ciao.