5.3 KiB
Templates
ERB templates access data in a similar way as traversing an ActiveRecord object graph. Simple object fields maybe accessed, as well as parent or child has-one and has-many associations.
All data passing is done explicitly through locals:
just as you would pass arguments to a function. By convention, this object may be a raw data Hash
received from GraphQL or a wrapped Ruby struct-like object. For consistency, the argument should be casted into a nice Ruby friendly object first thing in the template.
app/views/issues/show.html.erb
:
<%# cast issue data hash into ruby friendly struct %>
<% issue = Issues::Show::Issue.new(issue) %>
<h1><%= issue.repository.name %>: <%= issue.title %></h1>
<%= issue.body_html # bodyHTML is snakecasified %>
by <%= issue.author.login %>
<% issue.comments.each do |comment| %>
<%# Pass comment to subview %>
<%= render "issues/comment", comment: comment %>
<% end %>
This is all pretty traditional Ruby and Rails so far.
However, since the views can not access ActiveRecord objects directly anymore, a static query is defined inline .erb
file declaring the views data dependencies.
app/views/issues/show.html.erb
:
<%graphql
fragment on Issue {
title
repository {
name
}
bodyHTML
author {
login
}
comments {
# issues/show is only concerned with rendering a collection of
# comments, not the comment itself. However, we do need to statically
# include the data dependencies of the issues/comment partial we
# intend to render.
...Views::Issues::Comment::Comment
}
}
%>
Our GraphQL fragment definition includes all the fields we want to access just in the show.html.erb
file itself, nothing more, nothing less.
However, we do render a subview and hand off a comment
. Since we composed rendered calls, we'll need to compose our fragment query as well. This works by including the subview's ...Views::Issues::Comment::Comment
into the
comments
collection we requested.
app/views/issues/_comment.html.erb
:
<%graphql
fragment on Comment {
bodyHTML
author {
login
}
}
%>
<%# cast comment data hash into ruby friendly struct %>
<%# this casting also allows us to accessing any fields that were opaque to %>
<%# our parent view. %>
<% comment = Issues::Comment::CommentFragment.new(comment) %>
<%= comment.body_html %>
by <%= comment.author.login %>
Composing fragments
Static
Many views will always render a set of subviews.
<div class="issue-container">
<h1><%= issue.title %></h1>
<%= render "issues/header", issue: issue %>
<%= render "issues/body", issue: issue %>
</div>
The fragment should declare all the data dependencies used by just this partial. In this case, only the issue's title
is explicitly used, then include any subview fragments.
<%graphql
fragment IssueFragment on Issue {
title
...Views::Issues::Header::Issue
...Views::Issues::Body::Issue
}
%>
Looping over a collection
<h1><%= issue.title %></h1>
<% issue.comments.each do |comment| %>
<%= render "issues/comment", comment: comment %>
<% end %>
The fragment declares the view's own data dependencies as before. As well as the comments
collection. Since a comment is passed to the issues/comment
partial, not the issue, we'll include the fragment inside comments { ... }
.
<%graphql
fragment IssueFragment on Issue {
title
comments {
...Views::Issues::Comment::CommentFragment
}
}
%>
Branch on associated data presence
<h1><%= issue.title %></h1>
<% if milestone = issue.milestone %>
<%= render "issues/milestone", milestone: milestone
<% end %>
Similar to embedding a collection's fragment, the partial defines the data for the milestone itself, not the issue. We include the fragment in the milestone { ... }
connection.
<%graphql
fragment Issue on Issue {
title
milestone {
...Views::Issues::Milestone::Milestone
}
}
%>
Branch on arbitrary flag
More generally, UI may only be visible if a flag is set on the data object.
<% if comment.editable_by_viewer? %>
<%= render "issues/comment_edit_toolbar", comment: comment
<% end %>
<%= comment.body_html %>
Since the view may conditionally need the edit toolbars data, the view's fragment must always be included. This is an acceptable place where overfetching data is okay.
<%graphql
fragment Comment on Comment {
bodyHTML
editableByViewer
...Views::Issues::CommentEditToolbar::Comment
}
See also
github-graphql-rails-example template examples:
- app/views/repositories/index.html.erb shows the root template's listing query and composition over subviews.
- app/views/repositories/_repositories.html.erb makes use of GraphQL connections to show the first couple items and a "load more" button.
- app/views/repositories/show.html.erb shows the root template for the repository show page.