GitHub - bitaxis/tidy: Rails plugin to ease CSS & Javascript management

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Introduction
============

Tidy gives you an easy way to organize/manage your CSS and Javascript files
via two helper methods in the ApplicationHelpers module:

  tidy_javascripts
  tidy_stylesheets

Place your stylesheets and script files in pre-defined sub-directories under
your app's public/, and Tidy figures out which ones to load.


Usage
=====

First, install the plugin using this command:

  script/plugin install http://github.com/bitaxis/tidy.git

Next, invoke either or both methods in your layout(s).  For instance,

  <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
         "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
    <head>
      <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
      <title>My Rails App</title>
      <%= stylesheet_link_tag tidy_stylesheets %>
      <%= javascript_include_tag tidy_javascripts %>
    </head>
    <body>
      <%= yield %>
    </body>
  </html>

Then, author your code, taking care to place CSS and Javascript files in the
following sub-directories:

  public/javascripts
  public/stylesheets


How It Works
============

For Javascripts, Tidy includes these Javascript files in the following order,
skipping non-existent ones:

  1. public/javascripts/application.js
  2. public/javascripts/<controller-name>/_controller.js
  3. public/javascripts/<template-path>.js
  4. public/javascript/<partial-path(s)>.js

For stylesheets, Tidy includes these stylesheets in the following order,
skipping non-existent ones:

  1. public/stylesheets/application.css
  2. public/stylesheets/<controller-name>/_controller.css
  3. public/stylesheets/<template-path>.css
  4. public/stylesheets/<partial-path(s)>.css


Example
=======

Suppose your Rails application resembles the following:

  my_rails_app/
    app/
      controllers/
        projects_controller.rb
      views/
        projects/
          edit.html.erb
          index.html.erb
          new.html.erb
          show.html.erb
        shared/
          _navigation.html.erb
    public/
      javascripts/
        application.js
        projects/
          _controller.js
          index.js
      stylesheets/
        application.css
        projects/
          index.css
        shared/
          _navigation.css

Rendering the projects/index view will cause Tidy to load the following
Javascript files:

  1. public/javascripts/application.js
  2. public/javascripts/projects/_controller.js
  3. public/javascripts/projects/index.js

Similarly, rendering the projects/index view will cause Tidy to load the
following CSS files:

  1. public/stylesheets/application.css
  2. public/stylesheets/projects/index.css
  3. public/stylesheets/shared/_navigation.css

Tidy won't try to load public/stylesheets/projects/_controller.css because it
does not exist.


Low Pro
=======

Tidy works great with Dan Webb's Low Pro for unobtrusive Javascripting.  If
you are not yet a fan, check it out at http://github.com/danwrong/low-pro/.


Credits
=======

Tidy was originally inspired by Peter Harkin's blog post at
http://push.cx/2006/tidy-stylesheets-in-rails.  I first expanded his idea to
also manage Javascripts.  It is now available as a plugin.

Copyright (c) bitaxis.com, released under the MIT license.