TabsOnRails graduated from beta

TabsOnRails 1.0.0 is now available. TabsOnRails is a simple Rails plugin for creating and managing tabs menu and navigation menu with Ruby on Rails. It provides helpers for creating tabs, an navigation menu in general, with a flexible interface.

The first stable release is now available and I’m also really proud to say that TabsOnRails has 100% coverage of the source code. This doesn’t mean the plugin is perfect, nor I can assume this is bug-free. However, the plugin definitely deserves the stable flag.

I have been using TabsOnRails for creating tabs and navigation menu in the last year and I’m really satisfied with how the plugin evolved. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Getting Started

In your template use the tabs_tag helper to create your tab.

<% tabs_tag do |tab| %>
  <%= tab.home       'Homepage', root_path %>
  <%= tab.dashboard  'Dashboard', dashboard_path %>
  <%= tab.account    'Account', account_path %>
<% end %>

The example above produces the following HTML output.

<ul>
  <li><a href="/">Homepage</a></li>
  <li><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
  <li><a href="/account">Account</a></li>
</ul>

The usage is similar to the Rails route file. You create named tabs with the syntax tab.name_of_tab.

The name you use creating a tab is the same you’re going to refer to in your controller when you want to mark a tab as the current tab.

class DashboardController < ApplicationController
  set_tab :dashboard
end

Now, for every action defined in DashboardController, the template will automatically render the following HTML code.

<ul>
  <li><a href="/">Homepage</a></li>
  <li>Dashboard</li>
  <li><a href="/account">Account</a></li>
</ul>

Use the current_tab helper method if you need to access the value of current tab in your controller or template.

class DashboardController < ApplicationController
  set_tab :dashboard
end

# In your view
The name of current tab is <%= current_tab %>.

The open_tag can be customized with the :open_tabs option.

<% tabs_tag :open_tabs => { :id => "tabs", :class => "cool" } do |tab| %>
  <%= tab.home      'Homepage', root_path %>
  <%= tab.dashboard 'Dashboard', dashboard_path %>
  <%= tab.account   'Account', account_path %>
<% end %>

<ul id="tabs" class="cool">
  <li><a href="/">Homepage</a></li>
  <li><a href="/dashboard">Dashboard</a></li>
  <li><a href="/account">Account</a></li>
</ul>

Further customizations require a custom Builder (see below).

Installation

You can upgrade/install the library via RubyGems.

$ gem install tabs_on_rails --source http://gemcutter.org

Please note the GEM is now hosted on Gemcutter. If you installed it from GitHub you need to uninstall weppos-tabs_on_rails and install tabs_on_rails.

As usual, patches and feedback are welcomed.

Related posts:

1. TabsOnRails: creating and managing Tabs with Ruby on Rails
2. TabsOnRails 0.3.0 with concurrent tabs support aka namespaces
3. TabsOnRails 0.8.0
4. TabsOnRails and Helperful migrated to Gemcutter
5. ActiveRecord::MultiConditions development discontinued