Fwd: Focuses and Extensions
Greg
chatted about an idea of mine called Focuses. I wanted to take a
moment to flesh out the ideas.
Extensions:
So I know that one of the aims is a safe templating language.
Extensions would allow certain admins to sidestep that and use simple
erb in partials which other admins could then call. Less then a
plugin, more like easily extending the functionality. One of my huge
gripes with Mephisto is that if I wanted to extend it in any method, I
had to write liquid drops - which were a wee bit complex.
Joe user wants to show how many SQL queries it takes to generate a
page (because who does not want to show off that information?). Joe
user asks Jane Admin to create an extension. Jane uses ruby and erb to
create a partial that Joe can call which displays the relevant
information in. Jane can choose to dump the information in a raw
format, and allow Joe to parse it into his pretty templates, or she
can fully wrap it in html.
Fred Developer is asked to add on a event reservation system. Howard
builds a spiffy plugin. Including several extensions in the plugin, he
can deliver partials which allow for display of upcoming events, and
allow people to sign up for them as part of the plugin w/o difficult
hoops to jump through.
Amy Designer wants to include logic in her CSS files which will change
things about depending upon who is logged in, and or what ip address
range they are coming from. Amy can build a extension, embed it into
her css file, and proceed on with her life.
Focuses:
One of the ideas which I came up with was the idea of "focuses".
Basically we know that Railfrog cannot be everything to everyone.
However it has the potential of being a kick ass underlying meta-
framework. Rails is a great thing, but there is room for a layer on
top of it, for CMS type systems.
Enter focuses. Each focus should be a rake task, which downloads the
plugin to Railfrog to support the type of focus needed. So, a SMB site
might include plugins for different levels of user (developer, admin,
poster), a shopping cart, and a widget machine. A community portal
might include a Forum, a Picture Gallery etc.
Developers could work on the core, or a specific focus which scratches
their itches. I'd assume that code could and should be shared across
different focuses.
Howard Developer needs to deploy a shopping cart site. He downloads
the RailsfrogCMS package, installs it, and executes the rake
railsfrog:focus:ecomm command. He now has the basics for a ecommerce
site installed.
Please note, these names are just working names. PLEASE do replace
them with cooler monikers. Also feel free to tell me that I am insane.
Prog Frog
It seems there are many ideas about how to make extensions/plugins, etc.
Anybody wants to flesh out a prototype?
Croak!
--progfrog
http://railfrog.com/
Railfrog, the user-friendly, open-source web site deployment and
content management system built with Rails; producing well structured
and standards-compliant pages with Web 2.0 goodness.