extending zena

This tutorial will drive you through writing a special model for zena with custom content. For this, you need to write a brick.

First, prepare a folder for your brick. Let’s call it “gardening”.

1. write your model

Write the code in gardening/models/plant.rb.

class Plant < Page
  zafu_readable :water_level

  def self.ksel
    "A" # klass selector cannot be "P"
        # "P" is a for Project: NPP => Project
        # with this "A" selector: NPA => Plant
  end

  def water_level
    # funky, obscure, top-secret ruby code
  end
end

2. (optional) custom content

If you need a custom table (dynamic attributes are not enough), you can write a migration and version/content classes:

Write the migration in gardening/migration/001_create_plant.rb

class CreatePlant < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table "plant_contents", :options => 'type=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_general_ci' do |t|
      t.column "version_id", :integer # << mandatory !!
      t.column "brand", :string, :limit => 60, :default => "", :null => false
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table "plant_contents"
  end
end

Write the version and content classes:

gardening/models/plant_version.rb

class PlantVersion < Version
  def self.content_class
    PlantContent
  end
end

gardening/models/plant_content.rb

class PlantContent < ActiveRecord::Base
  act_as_content
  zafu_readable :brand
end

These two models help zena find the correct version/content when loading a “Plant”.

3. your brick is now

gardening
  + models
    + plant.rb 
    + plant_version.rb
    + plant_content.rb
  + migration
    + 001_create_plant.rb

You could further personnalise zena by adding rules inside the “zafu” folder or patch zena files by writing content inside “patch” (see the “captcha” brick as an example).

4. activate

Drop your “gardening” brick inside bricks.

Migrate the database:

# rake zena:migrate

Migrations are “scoped”: zena maintains a migration version for each brick. So a brick vendor might update the brick someday and add a migration in the “migration” folder of his brick. This is fine. Running zena:migrate again will update the database accordingly.

5. (deactivate)

Some day you realize this brick is a bad idea and you want to remove all traces of this thing:

# rake zena:migrate VERSION=0 BRICK=gardening

And then remove the “gardening” folder out of the “bricks” folder.

conclusion

You now have a new class called “Plant” which you can use just as any other class. You can write a custom edit tab by creating a template called Plant-+edit (Plant scope, “+edit” mode), you can access/set the custom plant content by using c_brand, c_brand=, etc.