Configuration

Before version 0.8, Comatose had few options that you could set via the Comatose::Options class. For everything else, it was expected that you would override methods on the ComatoseController and ComatoseAdminController classes. However, newer versions of Comatose support a more advanced configuration system that lets you configure just about everything in one place.

You'll configure Comatose in your environment.rb file. Here's an example of the configuration block:

Comatose.configure do |config|
  # Sets the text in the Admin UI's title area
  config.admin_title = "Site Content"
  config.admin_sub_title = "Content for the rest of us..."
end

See "Configuration Settings" for a complete listing of the configuration options. Following are a few of the highlights.

Administration Header

At the top of the comatose admin, it says 'Comatose' with a sub-title of 'The Micro CMS'. You can change these values without having to do a complete re-skin by defining these settings:

config.admin_title = "My App's CMS"
config.admin_sub_title = "Because size does matter..."

Content Types

You can tell Comatose what content-type to use. By default, it's set to use 'utf-8'. This should be fine for most uses, but if you are developing an application in a different charset, you can set it like this:

config.content_type = 'iso-8859-1'

Page Tree Expansion

You can also set the default level of expansion on the page tree like this:

config.default_tree_level = 3

By default, it's set to 2 -- which shows the first two levels of pages.

Blockable Settings

Some configuration settings allow you to attach a block of code to them. You can use these for returning dynamic values.

You can define modules to include in the ComatoseController by adding to the list of config.includes. You will have access to the module's code from within the setting blocks and the layout.

Use config.admin_includes for the ComatoseAdminController.

If you need access to certain helpers in the layout(s) Comatose uses, you can add to config.helpers or config.admin_helpers.

Note: These do not add methods, or tags, to a page's content. Just to the layout.

Authentication

You probably don't want just anybody to add, edit, or delete your comatose pages (Aw CRUD!). The ComatoseAdminController calls an #authorize method for every action as a before_filter. That #authorize method then looks for the config.admin_authorization block and executes it.

So by defining the config.admin_authorization setting you can lock down access to the comatose admin.

Comatose.configure do |config|

  # Includes AuthenticationSystem in the ComatoseAdminController
  config.admin_includes << :authenticated_system

  # Calls :login_required as a before_filter
  config.admin_authorization = :login_required

end

Setting the Author

Without modification, Comatose will set the page author as the REMOTE_ADDR sent by the browser -- usually an IP address. If you want it to be something else, it's as simple as defining the config.admin_get_author setting. If you've implemented authentication, it could look something like this:

Comatose.configure do |config|

  # Includes AuthenticationSystem in the ComatoseAdminController
  config.admin_includes << :authenticated_system

  # Returns the author name (login, in this case) for the current user
  config.admin_get_author do
    current_user.login
  end
end

Customizing The Administration Views

Comatose comes out-of-the-box with a serviceable administration UI. But if you want to modify it so that it will match your application's look-n-feel, it's easy to accomplish because there's a rake task available to help you get started.

$ rake comatose:admin:customize

When you run the task, it will copy the views and layouts it uses into your application folders (app/views/comatose_admin and app/views/layouts/comatose_admin.rhtml) folder, giving you total control over how it looks and behaves.

Following is a list of all the files it will copy into your application folder structure:

app/
  views/
    comatose_admin/           <- Admin views
      _form.rhtml
      _page_list_item.rhtml
      edit.rhtml
      index.rhtml
      new.rhtml
    layouts/
      comatose_admin.rhtml    <- Admin UI layout
public/
  javascripts/
    comatose_admin.js         <- Admin UI javascript
  stylesheets/
    comatose_admin.css        <- Admin UI css

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