JsInfo

JsInfo is a simple gem that trys to integrate javascript alert, confirm and prompt functions into Rails controller level. You can alert the users with a message without showing it in the view like the Flash of ActionDispatch does by using javascript functions.

The principles of JsInfo are:

Easy to use
Call from the controller
No extra codes in View layer

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'js_info'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install js_info

Usage

You can call JsInfo functions in the controllers:

js_alert("Your subscription is ok!")
js_confirm("Are you sure you want to visit google?", "http://www.google.com")
js_prompt("Please enter your name", "http://example.com")

js_alert

And here is a typical example in the users controller:

def create
  @user = User.find(params[:id])
  if @user.save
    js_alert("Your profile created successfully!")
  else
    render :new
  end
end

You can specify the target url as the second parameter:

js_alert("We are moving to github!", "https://github.com")

or more conventional way:

js_alert("Welcome Back!", root_path)

Please note that the default of the target url is request.referer

js_confirm

Sometimes a yes-no question is required:

js_confirm("Are you sure you want to sign up?", new_subscription_path)

As for js_confirm, the second parameter is necessary. If you want to redirect to another path when the user click no or cancel, it is possible to use the third parameter:

js_confirm("Are you sure you want sign up?", new_subscription_path, cancel_subscription_path)

Also note that the default value for third parameter is request.referer, so when the user click cancel will return to the previous page.

js_prompt

js_prompt is a method that will carry user's input to developer's target url with specified parameter name, here is an example:

js_prompt("what is your name?", new_user_path)

The typical javascript prompt will pop up with a dialog as you expected. As you can key in some values in the input box. When the user press the Enter, it will redirect to the new_user_path with a parameter named params_name with the value of user's input, say, Chuyi is the value of the input. it might look like "http://example.com?params_name=Chuyi" in the location bar.

Of course we can define the default value of the input or change the parameter to fit our needs:

js_prompt("Enter your email", new_user_path, "email", "[email protected]")

After pressing the confirm button the page will be redirected to "http://[email protected]". As you can see, the third parameter is the parameter name and the forth one is the default value, simple as that.

What you need to know

I test it in the rails development environment, so please let me know if there is any improvement or bug I need to fix, thank you.

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request