With the collection component you can display active record model or similar collections and add features like filtering, paginating and ordering with ease. Each of these features requires no page reload to take effect, because the collection component leverages a async component in combination with the event hub to only reload the effected content of the collection.
As you might experienced or know, displaying a collection of components can pretty fast lead to slow page loads, because of to big collections, therefore often requiring pagination. To work with bigger collections you often need a filter or search and an ordering to improve the user experience of your app. The collection component reduces the complexity of implementing all typical collection features by hand.
Usage
In order to use a collection on your page or component you need to include matestack collection helper Matestack::Ui::Core::Collection::Helper in the corresponding page or component. The helper provides a few methods. set_collection takes a hash as an argument and is responsible for setting up the collection component. It requires an :id and :data.
We recommend setting up your collection inside the prepare method of your page or component.
class Shop::Pages::Products::Index < Matestack::Ui::Page
include Matestack::Ui::Core::Collection::Helper
def prepare
@collection_id = 'products-collection'
@collection = set_collection(
id: @collection_id,
data: Products.all
)
end
def response
async id: 'product-collection', rerender_on: "#{@collection_id}-update" do
collection_content @collection.config do
@collection.data.each do |product|
paragraph text: product.name
end
end
end
end
end
This is a basic collection component rendering all products. So far there is no benefit in using the collection component instead of just rendering all products, but moving on from this we can now easily implement a pagination, filtering and ordering. The async component wrapping the collection_content is important to enable reloading filtered, ordered or paginated collections later without page reloads. A collection filter, order or pagination emits a "collection_id-update" event.
Pagination
Limiting the amount of displayed collection items increases our load time for bigger collections drastically, but a user needs to be able to click through all of your items. We achieve this by using pagination.
Pagination can be achieved quite easily with matestacks collection. We need to add a :init_limit and :base_count to our arguments of the set_collection call and change the usage of @collection.data to @collection.paginated_data. In order to give the user the option to switch between pages we add a pagination which display links to the previous and next page as well as all pages by using matestack collection helpers collection_content_previous, collection_content_next, collection_content_page_link. It also displays a few information about the pagination.
class Shop::Pages::Products::Index < Matestack::Ui::Page
include Matestack::Ui::Core::Collection::Helper
def prepare
@collection_id = 'products-collection'
base_query = Products.all
@collection = set_collection(
id: @collection_id,
data: base_query,
init_limit: 20,
base_count: base_query.count
)
end
def response
async id: 'product-collection', rerender_on: "#{@collection_id}-update" do
collection_content @collection.config do
# now we use paginated_data!
@collection.paginated_data.each do |product|
paragraph text: product.name
end
# pagination has to be placed within the collection_content!
pagination
end
end
end
def pagination
plain "showing #{@my_collection.from}"
plain "to #{@my_collection.to}"
plain "of #{@my_collection.base_count}"
collection_content_previous do
button text: "previous"
end
@my_collection.pages.each do |page|
collection_content_page_link page: page do
button text: page
end
end
collection_content_next do
button text: "next"
end
end
end
Filtering
Filtering a collection can be done by using the collection_filter helper along with the collection_filter_input, collection_filter_submit and collection_filter_reset helpers. The input values of your collection filter are accessible in the prepare statement by using get_collection_filter(id), which takes the collection id and returns a hash containing the input keys and values.
Let's filter our collection by name.
class Shop::Pages::Products::Index < Matestack::Ui::Page
include Matestack::Ui::Core::Collection::Helper
def prepare
@collection_id = 'products-collection'
base_query = Products.all
filter = get_collection_filter(@collection_id)
filtered_query = Products.where('name LIKE ?', filter[:name])
@collection = set_collection(
id: @collection_id,
data: base_query,
init_limit: 20,
base_count: base_query.count,
filtered_count: filtered_query.count
)
end
def response
filter
async id: 'product-collection', rerender_on: "#{@collection_id}-update" do
collection_content @collection.config do
# here we use paginated_data!
@collection.paginated_data.each do |product|
paragraph text: product.name
end
# pagination has to be placed within the collection_content!
pagination
end
end
end
def filter
collection_filter @collection.config do
collection_filter_input key: :name, type: :text
collection_filter_submit do
button text: 'Filter'
end
collection_filter_reset do
button text: 'Reset'
end
end
end
def pagination
plain "showing #{@my_collection.from}"
plain "to #{@my_collection.to}"
plain "of #{@my_collection.base_count}"
collection_content_previous do
button text: "previous"
end
@my_collection.pages.each do |page|
collection_content_page_link page: page do
button text: page
end
end
collection_content_next do
button text: "next"
end
end
end
That's it. Now we can filter our collection by product name.
Ordering
Ordering a collection can be achieved by using the collection_order_toggle helper along with get_collection_order to receive the selected order.
class Shop::Pages::Products::Index < Matestack::Ui::Page
include Matestack::Ui::Core::Collection::Helper
def prepare
@collection_id = 'products-collection'
base_query = Products.all
order = get_collection_order(@collection_id)
ordered_query = Products.all.order(current_order)
@collection = set_collection(
id: @collection_id,
data: ordered_query,
init_limit: 20,
base_count: base_query.count
)
end
def response
order
async id: 'product-collection', rerender_on: "#{@collection_id}-update" do
collection_content @collection.config do
# here we use paginated_data!
@collection.paginated_data.each do |product|
paragraph text: product.name
end
# pagination has to be placed within the collection_content!
pagination
end
end
end
def order
collection_order @my_collection.config do
plain "sort by:"
collection_order_toggle key: :title do
button do
plain "Title"
collection_order_toggle_indicator key: :title, asc: '↑', desc: '↓'
end
end
end
end
#...
end
Complete documentation
If you want to know all details about the collection component as well as more example on how to use filtering, ordering and pagination together checkout its api documentation.
