gritter

version 0.6.0
Robin Brouwer
Daniël Zwijnenburg
45north

This Ruby on Rails gem allows you to easily add Growl-like notifications to your application using a jQuery plugin called 'gritter'.

Installation

You can use this gem by putting the following inside your Gemfile:

gem "gritter"

You can also install this as a plugin with the following command:

rails plugin install git://github.com/RobinBrouwer/gritter.git

This is a Rails 3 gem. When you're using Rails 2 you should use version 0.3 (this is a plugin):

script/plugin install git://github.com/RobinBrouwer/gritter.git -r 'tag v0.3'

Start your server and you'll see that three folders are added to your /javascripts, /stylesheets and /images folders. Now you can use gritter inside your Rails application.

Now add the following to your head-tag inside the layout:

<%= include_gritter %>

If you also want to add jQuery together with gritter (from googleapis.com) you can use the following helper:

<%= include_gritter_and_jquery %>

You can pass extra arguments to these functions to set the default options for gritter.

:fade_in_speed => "medium"            # => Allows you to set the fade-in-speed. Can be String or Integer (in ms).
:fade_out_speed => 1000               # => Allows you to set the fade-out-speed. Can be String or Integer (in ms).
:time => 8000                         # => Allows you to set the time the notification stays. Must be an Integer (in ms).

The :fade_in_speed and :fade_out_speed options accept the following Strings:

"slow"
"medium"
"fast"

Now you can use gritter inside your Rails application. You should really check out the gflash helper. It's really handy!

Changes

Version 0.6 changes:

- Added locales support for gflash (see README);
- README changes.

Version 0.5 changes:

- Works with Ruby 1.9 now (the Array.to_s was causing problems);
- Refactored a lot of code to make everything a bit more logical;
- The js helper doesn't add a semicolon (;) after the script anymore;
- The js helper accepts several scripts as options;
- Changed the way linebreaks (\n) are created;
- Added an 'e' variable for all the callbacks;
- Added String support for :fade_out_speed;
- Changed the README.

Usage

There are several helpers you can use with gritter. All of them print out Javascript code without script-tags.

add_gritter
remove_gritter
extend_gritter

To add the script-tags we added another function called js. It allows you to easily add script-tags around your javascript. It can be used in combination with gritter, but also other Javascript you want to run.

Since version 0.3 we also added a gflash helper. This helper supports locales since version 0.6. You can read more about this helper below.

add_gritter

The add_gritter helper allows you to add a gritter notification to your application. It outputs Javascript directly into your template. It works like this inside a js.erb file:

<%= add_gritter("This is a notification just for you!") %>

The add_gritter helper allows you to easily set the text for the notification. When you want to change the title, just pass the :title argument to the helper:

<%= add_gritter("This is a notification just for you!", :title => "Please pay attention!") %>

There are many more arguments you can pass to the helper:

:title => "This is a title"            # => Allows you to set the title for the notification.
:image => "/images/rails.png"          # => Allows you to add an image to the notification.
:sticky => true                        # => Allows you to make the notification sticky.
:time => 4000                          # => Allows you to set the time when the notification disappears (in ms).
:class_name => "gritter"               # => Allows you to set a different classname.
:before_open => "alert('Opening!');"   # => Execute javascript before opening.
:after_open => "alert('Opened!');"     # => Execute javascript after opening.
:before_close => "alert('Closing!');"  # => Execute javascript before closing.
:after_close => "alert('Closed!');"    # => Execute javascript after closing.

The :image argument also allows you to easily set five different images:

:success
:warning
:notice
:error
:progress

It works like this in combination with flash[:notice] and the js helper:

<%= js add_gritter(flash[:notice], :image => :notice, :title => "Pay attention!", :sticky => true) %>

The js helper is almost the same as the javascript_tag helper. The difference is that you can pass several scripts at once. You don't need to pass these scripts as an Array. The helper also adds a linebreak (\n) after each script.

<%= js add_gritter("See my notification"), add_gritter("Another one") %>

It puts all the scripts inside a single script-tag.

And that's it! You just added Growl-like notifications to your Rails application. It's great for all kinds of notifications, including the flash notifications you want to show to your users.

remove_gritter

The remove_gritter helper removes all gritter notifications from the screen. You can use it inside a js.erb file:

<%= remove_gritter %>

You can pass two extra arguments to this helper.

:before_close => "alert('Closing!');"  # => Execute javascript before closing.
:after_close => "alert('Closed!');"    # => Execute javascript after closing.

You can also use the js helper to add script-tags around this helper.

extend_gritter

The extend_gritter helper allows you to set the default gritter options, just like you can do with the include_gritter helpers. To see what arguments you can pass to this helper just check the include_gritter helper.

You can also use the js helper to add script-tags around this helper.

gflash

The gflash helper is a different kind of flash[:notice] message. It uses the add_gritter helper and the default images used in this plugin. It uses a session to remember the flash messages. Add the following inside your controller action:

def create
	gflash :success => "The product has been created successfully!"
end

Now you can add the following to your layout view inside the body-tag:

<%= gflash %>

The flash-message will be shown with 'success.png' as the image and 'Success' as the title. To change the title you can add the following to the gflash helper inside the layout:

<%= gflash :success => "It has been successful!" %>

Now the default title will be overwritten. You can use the following gflash options:

:success
:warning
:notice
:error
:progress

Each uses the corresponding image and title. You can also add multiple gritter notifications at once:

def create
	gflash :success => "The product has been created successfully!", :notice => "This product doesn't have a category."
end

Besides passing the exact text inside the controller, gflash also supports locales (both for messages and titles). When you start your server a new locale file will be added to /config/locales called gflash.en.yml. Here you can set the locales for all your gflash messages and the titles. It works like this:

en:
  gflash:
    titles:
      notice: "Custom notice title"
      success: "Success"
      warning: "Warning"
      error: "Error"
      progress: "Progress"
    products: # => Controller name
      create: # => Action name
        notice: "Custom notice message"

Now you can do the following inside your Controller:

def create gflash :notice => true end

The locales for the :notice title and message will now be used. You can still pass a String to overwrite a locale.

You can also use gflash inside js.erb files:

<%= gflash :js => true %>

And that's how you add gflash to your Rails application. Just remember that you can only set which gflash message you want shown inside the controller. The gflash helper inside the views will show the notification and change the title when you pass extra arguments. It will not change the message.

Special Thanks

We'd like to express our gratitude to the following people:

Many thanks to Jordan Boesch, creator of the AWESOME jQuery plugin gritter. http://boedesign.com/blog/2009/07/11/growl-for-jquery-gritter/

Also special thanks to Liam McKay for creating the awesome icons! http://wefunction.com/2008/07/function-free-icon-set/