Merged

A CMS that integrates into the rails workflow. Ie it is file based not db based.

Changes propagate in the normal development cycle, with git, possible branches, possible staging, possible reviews and controlled deploys.

Usage

Merged is designed for developers to give limited editing facilities to users. As with rails, there is great flexibility how this can be achieved, a basic example below.

Concepts

Merged has simple but powerful concepts and structures to define the interactions users may have.

Page

The core entity that may be edited is a Page. Pages contain Sections (below) in a way defined by developers.

A Page has a type, different types may define different layouts, or rather types of Sections they may include.

A page has a name which is it's Url, Merged is not designed for nesting currently.

All data that users change is stored in the Pages' Yaml, which get committed and merged to propagate to the site.

A Page also has data, attributes and options, see below.

Sections

Merged itself defines many styles of sections, and off course developers may define more. For example a Header with text is a section, a hero section is a section, and a card section is a different style.

The only defining characteristic of a section is really that it is full width, and it has a template that renders the content.

A Page may contain as many sections as the Page definition allows.

A Section in turn may contain cards.

Like a Page, a Section may have options.

Cards

Cards, as in general css lingo, are usually smaller html boxes, usually contained in a grid (defined by the Section). But they may be form fields, or features (svg).

Cards have data and options like the other elements.

Image

Merged also manages images, adding deleting, renaming, even a small editor. Images are stored in the assets folder. With the Pages, Sections and Cards they define the content that users can change.

Images merge into the upstream in the same way as the pages, through git actions (partially done by Merged)

Change (-sets)

As data is in files, all change happens by git. Merged partially manages this, by making changes visible to the users, ie what Pages and Images were added/removed or edited. Merged can commit and in the future maybe even push.

Merged requires a user to be logged in and will log all changes, meaning change times and the email of the editor. The last change is displayed in the ui for auditing purposes.

Basic setup

A developer set up a machine on a intranet/lan. Ie access is restricted by physical access.

The machine is set up as a developer machine, on a "feature" branch. A User may use the machine to edit and commit and push (the branch).

The developer reviews, merges changes and deploys.

Installation

Add to your Gemfile:

gem "merged" , git: "https://github.com/HubFeenixMakers/merged"

And then bundle:

$ bundle

Mount engine in routes for editing (possibly not in production).

mount Merged::Engine => "/merged" unless Rails.env.production?

Create route to serve content.

get ":id" , to: "merged/view#page" , id: :id

If Merged served the root:

root "merged/view#page" , id: 'index'

Stylesheets

Apps not using tailwind

Include merged stylesheet to your layout or asset pipeline.

= stylesheet_link_tag "application"
= stylesheet_link_tag "merged/merged"

Apps using tailwind

If you use tailwind with the tailwind gem, you need to edit the tailwind config.

Basically it is impossible to have two tailwind generated stylesheets, so your app needs to pick up the merged styles. This can be configured like so:

const output = execSync('bundle show merged', { encoding: 'utf-8' });
const fullname = output.trim() + '/app/**/*.{haml,html,rb}' ;


module.exports = {
  content: [
    fullname ,
    .... as before
  ]

Also, merged overrides some tailwind styles (especially prose/markdown), so if you want to use markdown i suggest importing the merged/tailwind_styles into your application.css. This is pure css, and does not need to be processed by tailwind.

Developers

Styles

Developers should look at the predefined styles. These are found in merged gem /config/merged/**style.yml

And on a running app http://localhost:3000/merged/styles/index

Section Views

These are under app/views/merged/views/sections/*haml and the name of the file matches the section_style entry

Developers may define more section styles, but must provide the partials to render them.

Card Views

These are under app/views/merged/views/cards/*haml and the name of the file matches the card entry.

Developers may define more card styles, but must provide the partials to render them.

Options

Option definitions (also found under style dir) are common between elements. Options may be added and then used in the view partials. Many common ones (background, color) and many more are already defined.

To make the partials more dry, Helpers are defined in OptionsHelper

Contributing

Ask first.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.