Stepper

Stepper is multistep form (wizard) solution for Rails 3.1. Stepper allows you to split up your large form into series of pages that users can navigate through to complete the form and saving it's state.

Installation

You can use it with Rails 3.1:

gem install stepper

Getting Started

Configuring model

Create migration for model:

  add_column :companies, :current_step, :string
  add_index  :companies, :current_step

Setup names of steps that you want to have:

  class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_steps :steps => %w{ description kind address }
  end

Setup validation for each step if necessary, method should have name like validate_#{step_name}:

  def validate_description
    self.validates_presence_of :name
    self.validates_presence_of :desc
  end

  def validate_address
    self.validates_presence_of :city
    self.validates_presence_of :country
    self.validates_presence_of :address
  end

  def validate_kind
    self.validates_presence_of :kind
  end

Now your model supports a multistep form!

Configuring controller

Stepper uses update, create, new and next_step actions, so you should have the following routes:

  resources :companies do
    get :next_step, :on => :member
  end

For your controller you need just add the `has_steps method:

  class CompaniesController < ApplicationController
    has_steps
  end

And you should have a +show+ action because stepper redirects to it after finishing the last step by default. For more options see method documentation.

Configuring view

Add stepper helper method into the form in view that rendered by new action:

  <%= form_for(@company) do |f| %>
    <%= stepper f %>
  <% end %>

The stepper helper renders partial according to the current step of form. Partials should be named like #{step_name}_step:

_name_step.html.erb

  <%= f.label :name %>
  <%= f.text_field :name %>
  <%= f.label :desc %>
  <%= f.text_field :desc %>

_city_step.html.erb

  <%= f.label :city %>
  <%= f.text_field :city %>
  <%= f.label :country %>
  <%= f.text_field :country %>
  <%= f.label :city %>
  <%= f.text_field :city %>

_kind_step.html.erb

  <%= f.label :kind %>
  <%= f.text_field :kind %>

stepper helper creates buttons "Next", "Previous", "Save" and "Finish" as well. You can change button names by adding the following to your locales:

  en:
    stepper:
      next_step: 'Next step'
      previous_step: 'Previous step'
      save: 'Finish later'
      finish: 'Finish'

next_step button validates, saves current step and renders next step of form; previous_step saves current step and renders previous step of form; save save current step and redirects to index page; finish is showed only for last step instead of next_step button and it validates, saves last step and redirects to show.

If you want to have other partials for buttons than add your partial to: app/views/stepper/_fields.html.erb

Contributing to stepper

Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn't been implemented or the bug hasn't been fixed yet
Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn't requested it and/or contributed it
Fork the project
Start a feature/bugfix branch
Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution
Make sure to add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.