The minimalist guide to Spree Static Content

In many Spree projects where I have worked previously, it had become necessary to handle static pages like Help, Terms and Conditions, About Us, etc… In short, all those "stock pages" and some others that come out of the box with any eCommerce website.

I always recommend my colleagues to deliver a simple way to generate the pages, although I "LOVE" to write all the HTML with my own hands, it is more efficient to use Rails helpers or some other markup as HAML.

The point is, as consultants, it is our duty to deliver a stable, functional, installable and, somewhat recoverable product. To achieve this, the extension Spree Static Content has always worked for me because it is simple to configure and we can easily generate a task to regenerate all the "core" static pages of our project. It is especially useful for those cases where someone "accidentally" deletes their contents.

** lib/tasks/static_content.rake **

namespace: static_content do 
    desc 'Reload static pages'       
    reload task: environment do 
        Spree::Page.destroy_all 
        pages = YAML.load_file(Rails.root.join ('db', 'fixtures', 
            'static_content.yml')) 
        controller_instance = ApplicationController.new 
        pages.each_value do |data|
            html = controller_instance.render_to_string (template: data     ['body']) 
            data['body'] = html 
            Spree::Page.create (data) 
        end
    end
end

As you can see, the rake task is quite simple and consists of the following steps:

1. Delete existing pages:

   This is a matter of taste, it is possible to separate the "default" static pages from any other with some scope or you are able to find specific pages you want to delete. In my case, I'm destroying all of them.

2. Read the information on pages:

   For convenience, I always create a "setup" file separately which contains the necessary information for our pages such as Title, Slug, and the name of the View that we'll be using as our static page's Body.

3. Create an instance of a controller:

   This has the purpose of delegating the rendering of the views to the proper object allowing us, as I said before, to use view helpers or another abstraction markup language like HAML.

4. Iterate each page:

   For each entry we have in our configuration file, we're going to generate the body of the page letting our Controller instance the renderee, from there on out we only create the Spree::Page.

Static Content Example config file:

*** db/fixtures/static_content.yml***

privacy_policy: 
    title: Privacy Policy 
    body: 'spree/static_content/_privacy_policy' 
    slug: '/privacy-policy' 
    show_in_header: false 
    show_in_footer: true 
    position: 0
    visible: true
    layout: '' 
    render_layout_as_partial: false 

help: 
    title: My Site Help       
    body: 'spree/static_content/_help' 
    slug: '/help' 
    show_in_header: true 
    show_in_footer: true 
    position: 1 
    visible: true 
    layout: '' 
    render_layout_as_partial: false 

Example page:

app/views/spree/staticcontent/privacy_policy.html.haml

%h2 General Statement of Principles 

%w As described in detail below, any information we gather at this website is strictly for our use and is not shared with any other entity, public or private, for ANY reason - period. We will not sell or give away any lists or other data That we may retain and we do not purchase such information from other sources ... 

= image_tag 'banner.png', width: 100, height: 10, alt: 'Policy Banner' 

%h3 
    For Any question Please send us a mail to 
    = link_to 'info@mysite.com', 'mailto: info@mysite.com', alt: 'Info' 
    %span Directly or send your question: 

= form_tag do 
    text\_field\_tag ​​=: name 
    .... 

That's all, we just need to go to a terminal an run:

terminal

$ be rake static_content:reload

And… Voilà! we won't have headaches trying to update, maintain or recover any "static page" we deliver and that somebody had erased "accidentally".

Questions, comments and suggestions are always welcome:

twitter: @mumoc

github: mumoc