Customization¶

Overriding Default Views, Partials, Templates, etc.¶

It is possible to override any Rails view in the application by mimicking the directory structure in app/views but under another folder site_specific/app/views. For example, to use your own version of _dashboard.html.erb in app/views/pages you would put it in site_specific/app/views/pages.

You can override the #{Rails.root}/site_specific folder itself with the environment variable TAPESTRY_OVERRIDE_PATH, so that the folder can be left entirely outside of the Tapestry code base.

It is important to understand that including this folder, any subfolders, and all files is optional. If you do not wish to override a particular view, leave it out of the override folder.

Caveat¶

This statement to be followed up after more investigation.

It is my impression that when using multiple paths that the technique of using explicitly_unloadable_constants for having files reload without restarting the server will not work properly. This could mean that while developing these site-specific files that the server has to be restarted after each change.

Overriding lib Files¶

The same logic works for files in the override path under the lib subfolder, i.e. either #{Rails.root}/site_specific/lib or #{ENV['TAPESTRY_OVERRIDE_PATH']}/lib.

Adding Custom Questions to the "Participation Consent" Form¶

Currently this text and form are found in views/participation_consents/show.html.erb. This currently saves the user's responses in the InformedConsentResponse model. There is in this model a field called "other_answers" that is a serialized Hash where any number of "dynamically defined" answers can be saved with keys of your choosing. To accomplish this you have to add form inputs that end up with a name attribute that looks like (e.g. to record "age"): other_answers[age] and it will be recorded in the "other_answers" Hash in the model under the :age key.

There is a view helper for creating radio boxes for the participation concept form using this "other_answers" field. Example:

  <div class="consent-form-question">
    <p>
      Would you judge yourself to be sane?
      <%= radio_answers( 'sanity', [['0', 'No'],
                                    ['1', 'Sometimes'],
                                    ['2', 'Yes']] ) %>
    </p>
  </div>

Adding Custom Validation of Your Custom Question¶

This is done by overriding a site specific validations file in the lib override folder, in the lib/site_specific/validations.rb module. By adding a method called informed_consent_response_validations (after the name of the model relevant to the Participation Consent form) to the copy of this module you've placed in the lib/site_specific override folder, you can check other_answers and add errors in the standard ActiveRecord way. For example:

    def informed_consent_response_validations
      if self.other_answers[:sanity] == '2'
        errors.add( :other_answers, :sanity_not_permitted)
      end
    end

The message should be placed in your locale file under:

en:
  activerecord:
    errors:
      models:
        informed_consent_response:
          attributes:
            other_answers:
              sanity_not_permitted: 'You are not permitted to be sane.'