README

The "embedded actions" plugin 
=============================

BASIC USAGE
  Just like the traditional render :partial, embedded actions allow you to
  refactor your views and extract presentation logic and templates into separate
  files.

  Unlike partials, embedded actions also let you define business logic to be
  performed before the partial is included. That logic is encapsulated in the
  already well understood metaphor of an action inside a controller.

  So a simple call like

  <%= embed_action :controller => "songs", :action => "top10" %>

  lets you include an html fragment containing the top 10 songs into any of your
  pages, regardless of which controller, action or view wants to do the including.

CACHING
  Embedded actions can provide caching of their results (allowing for different 
  parameters) just like page caching, but at the level of html fragments. 
  So your dynamic pages can still be rendered dynamically, but some of the embedded
  actions can be cached (and expired) independently.

  Just declare an action as 'cacheable' in a way similar to page caching, 
  by invoking "caches_embedded" with the name of the action to cache.

  class TestController < ApplicationController
    caches_embedded :user_list

    def user_list
      ...
    end
  end

  Cached fragments can be invalidated with calls to expires_embedded, but you must
  remember to use the same set of parameters used to embed the cached action in
  the first place.

  Additionally, the underlying fragment caching mechanism can be passed 
  an options hash in the following manner:

    caches_embedded :user_list, :ttl => 60.minutes

  And you can specify additional arguments to be used when generating the cache name.
  Which is better explained with an example:
  
    caches_embedded :user_list, :options_for_name => Proc.new do |controller| 
      {:is_admin => controller.current_user.is_admin?}
    end

  this way, there will be two separate cached versions, one for admin users and one 
  for regular users. The hash returned is merged with the actual hash passed on
  the embed_action call, and is used to create an "url-like" name for the cached
  fragment. So in this case, a call like <%= embed_action :action => "test" %> will
  produce two different fragments: "/mycontroller/test?is_admin=false" and "...?is_admin=true"
  depending on the result of controller.current_user.is_admin? when embed_action 
  is called.
  
  Finally, cached fragments can be compressed before being stored:
  
    caches_embedded :user_list, :compress => true
    
  
RESPONDS_TO
  Actions can use Rails' responds_to to provide different behaviours when invoked 
  normally or embedded in another view.
  
  class TestController < ApplicationController
    def user_list
      responds_to do |format|
        format.html     {render :layout => :application}
        format.embedded {render :layout => false}
      end
    end
  end

SOURCE CODE
  The official repository for embedded_actions is in GitHub:
  
  http://github.com/sd/embedded-actions/tree/master



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2007, 2008 Sebastian Delmont <sd@notso.net> 
Copyright (c) 2007, 2008 StreetEasy / NMD Interactive <http://www.streeteasy.com/> 
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

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* Neither the name of Sebastian Delmont, nor StreetEasy nor NMD Interactive 
nor the names of their contributors may be used to endorse or promote products 
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS
- Sebastian Delmont <sd@notso.net>
- Jerret Taylor <jerrett@gmail.com>
- Ryan Barber <rfb@skyscraper.nu>
- Andreas Simon <asimon@med4you.de>
- Jonathan Boler <galatians@gmail.com>
- Roman Gonzalez <romanandreg@gmail.com>

RELEASE HISTORY
  1.2 - Apr 28 2011
    Compression support
  
  1.1.3 - Mar 24 2009
    Fixed issues with content-type leakage
    Rails 2.3 compatibility
  
  1.1.2 - Dec 5 2008
    Simplified responds_to behaviour
    Rails 2.2 compatibility (Jonathan)
  
  1.1.1 - Feb 20 2008
    Allow symbol names for controllers and actions (Andreas)
    Fixed deprecated 'require_gem' in test environment (Andreas)
  
  1.1 - Dec 4 2007
    Passthrough options for fragment caching (Ryan).
    Support for namespaced controllers in caching (Jerret). 
    Minor bug fixes.
  
  1.0.2 - Nov 29 2007
    Fixed bug (thanks Jerret) that caused caching settings to leak 
    to actions with the same name in other controllers.
    
  1.0.1 - Oct 30 2007 
    Fixed bug that was causing a "Content-encoding: identity" to leak 
    to all requests.
    
  1.0 - Oct 23 2007
    First widespread release.