[LRUG] CMS for bespoke API

Wed Sep 11 07:39:47 PDT 2013

Thanks again. Some very interesting responses.

James - I'll look into Sir Trevor and give you a shout, thanks.

Jasim - CamliStore looks pretty amazing but as you said, too low-level for
my purposes. Definitely worth keeping an eye on though.

Oliver - I think of ActiveAdmin and RailsAdmin as sort of the same although
I'm sure there are similarities. This may well end up being the route I
take as it seems to draw the line between library code and bespoke code in
an acceptable place.

Steve / Jon - I'll look into Radiant as it sounds like it might do what I
want. I didn't really enjoy using it last time I tried but it may have got
better. I've built a few things with Padrino before and might give it a go.
It seems like essentially a light-weight version of the Rails / RailsAdmin
solution though unless I'm missing something.

Riccardo - In an ideal world I could do this but I think it highly unlikely
that we'll be allowed to open source it, sadly.

I'll report back when I get started.

Cheers
Ian

On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 12:19 PM, James Higgs <jameshiggs at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Ian,
>
> I'm not sure if this is interesting, but we (Made by Many) have an open
> source (MIT licence) browser-based rich content editor that we originally
> made for ITV News and released with their very kind permission. It's called
> Sir Trevor and it speaks JSON and Markdown for structured text.
>
> A piece of content in Sir Trevor's world is composed of "blocks" and you
> can use the stock blocks or create your own. You can have a single instance
> of Sir Trevor per page, or many. Up to you.
>
> We often use Sir Trevor inside a simple Rails admin using Devise for
> authentication and Inherited Resources to help us scaffold out CRUD
> functionality. It fits really well in this workflow.
>
> I don't know what kind of content you're looking to capture, but there are
> built in block types for text, lists, tweets, YouTube videos, images and so
> on. You can easily create your own custom block types - which we've done a
> lot for ITV - to create completely tailored editing experiences if the
> built-in block types don't suffice.
>
> We haven't really launched this officially, but it is in production use at
> ITV and on our own website.  It's also already being used by a few
> companies that are not our clients or associated with us. It has been
> through a fairly intense period of refactoring recently, so it's pretty
> clean.
>
> There's also a gem that helps you use it in Rails really easily.
>
> Take a look ad see if it might help. It doesn't sound like it's going to
> solve all of your problems, but it might be a pice of the jigsaw.
>
> JS library: https://github.com/madebymany/sir-trevor-js
> Rails Gem: https://github.com/madebymany/sir-trevor-rails
>
> If it's interesting, I can can put you in touch with the guys who maintain
> it here and they'll provide you with help. Pull requests are very welcome.
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, 11 September 2013 at 10:31, Ian Kynnersley wrote:
>
> > Thanks for all the useful responses. I'll definitely look into Active
> Model Serializer.
> >
> > Most of these replies rely on me creating a bespoke model structure in
> code which is what I'm trying to avoid. Parse and Helios look interesting
> but don't give me the admin interface that I need to allow totally
> non-techie users to be able to manage the content themselves.
> >
> > What I'm after would be a library that I can install in my app (or
> something hosted like Parse / Helios) that instantly gives me my CMS.
> Something a bit like Radiant maybe. I would then want to create my model
> structure within that CMS such that admin users could add, remove and
> update information easily. However, unlike a normal CMS which would render
> the output as a website with some templates to alter the look and feel, I
> want it to provide a JSON API.
> >
> > The reason for all of this is that ownership of this app will be handed
> over to a different company and they are (rightly) nervous about taking on
> a completely bespoke application rather than a customised version of an
> off-the-shelf product.
> >
> > Perhaps I am looking for something that doesn't exist so your thoughts
> are all very useful.
> >
> > Thanks again
> > Ian
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 3:20 AM, Tejas Dinkar <tejasdinkar at gmail.com(mailto:
> tejasdinkar at gmail.com)> wrote:
> > > On Sep-11-2013, at 7:02 AM, Nick Novitski <nicknovitski at gmail.com(mailto:
> nicknovitski at gmail.com)> wrote:
> > > > There's also https://github.com/rails-api/active_model_serializers
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > +1 on Active Model Serializer.
> > >
> > > Benefits:
> > > 1) Easily testable, and OO
> > > 2) Has access to current_user (or any other controller method via
> `scope'). This makes it possible for you to serialize based on who has
> requested the object
> > > 3) Works seamlessly with respond_with
> > > 4) If you have the same relation object multiple times on your object
> (say user can be created_by, updated_by, etc…) then you have a way to just
> `embed' the user once.
> > >
> > > Also, +1 on rails-api gem as well :-)
> > > --
> > > Tejas Dinkar
> > > http://www.nilenso.com
> > > Nilenso Software (formerly C42 Engineering)
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Chat mailing list
> > > Chat at lists.lrug.org (mailto:Chat at lists.lrug.org)
> > > http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Ian Kynnersley
> > http://iankynnersley.co.uk | +44 (0) 7973 420 829 |
> http://twitter.com/kpopper
> > _______________________________________________
> > Chat mailing list
> > Chat at lists.lrug.org (mailto:Chat at lists.lrug.org)
> > http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
>
>
>
>

-- 

Ian Kynnersley
http://iankynnersley.co.uk | +44 (0) 7973 420 829 |
http://twitter.com/kpopper
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