Like so many other people at the moment, I'm using Twitter bootstrap as the basis for sites at the moment. I was playing around with the rails scaffold generators and wondered how easy it would be to customise them to generate bootstrap compatible views.

Turns out of course, it's really easy!

The template files for the generators are in railties, so if you bundle open railties you can see what the defaults are. At the moment (railties v3.2.10) the files are at lib/generators/erb/scaffold/templates. I use haml for view templates, which means haml-rails has put haml templates at lib/generators/haml/scaffold/templates.

To make the scaffolded files into exactly what you want, just create your own versions in corresponding locations in your application.

My application layout places the yield inside a span12, so I can either start with another row, with spans inside the row, or directly with content. I've ended up with templates that look like this:

lib/templates/haml/scaffold/new.html.haml:
%h1.page-header New <%= singular_table_name %>

=render 'form'
lib/templates/haml/scaffold/edit.html.haml:
%h1.page-header Editing <%= singular_table_name %>

=render 'form'
lib/templates/haml/scaffold/_form.html.haml:
=simple_form_for(@<%= singular_table_name %>, validate: true, html: { class: 'form-horizontal' } ) do |f|
  =f.error_notification

  .form-inputs
  <%- attributes.each do |attribute| -%>
    =f.<%= attribute.reference? ? :association : :input %> :<%= attribute.name %>
  <%- end -%>

  .form-actions
    =f.button :submit
lib/templates/haml/scaffold/index.html.haml:
%h1.page-header All <%= plural_table_name %>

%table.table.table-bordered.table-striped
  %tbody
    -@<%= plural_table_name %>.each do |<%= singular_table_name %>|
      %tr
        %td=link_to <%= singular_table_name %>, <%= singular_table_name %>
        %td=link_to 'Edit', edit_<%= singular_table_name %>_path(<%= singular_table_name %>), class: 'btn btn-primary btn-mini'
        %td=link_to 'Destroy', <%= singular_table_name %>, <%= key_value :method, ":delete" %>, <%= key_value :data, "{ #{key_value :confirm, "'Are you sure?'"} }" %>, class: 'btn btn-danger btn-mini'

=will_paginate @<%= plural_table_name %>, renderer: BootstrapPagination::Rails

.details
  =link_to 'New <%= human_name %>', new_<%= singular_table_name %>_path, class: 'btn btn-primary'</pre>
<pre class="lang:default decode:true" title="lib/templates/haml/scaffold/show.html.haml">%h1.page-header=@<%= singular_table_name %>

%table.table.table-bordered.table-striped
  %tbody
<% attributes.each do |attribute| -%>
    %tr
      %td.strong <%= attribute.human_name %>:
      %td=@<%= singular_table_name %>.<%= attribute.name %>
<% end -%>

.details
  =link_to 'Edit', edit_<%= singular_table_name %>_path(@<%= singular_table_name %>), class: 'btn btn-primary'
  =link_to 'Delete', @<%= singular_table_name %>, confirm: 'Are you sure?', method: :delete, class: 'btn btn-danger'
  =link_to 'New <%= human_name %>', new_<%= singular_table_name %>_path, class: 'btn btn-primary'

As you might have guessed from the form I use simple_form - this provides generators for its forms anyway, but I've added the validates: true bit - this is for the client_side_validations gem. And the pagination block in index.html.haml will have indicated to you that I'm over-riding the controller generator - this has to go in lib/templates/rails/scaffold_controller/controller.rb - I'm adding the pagination for the index action, and load_and_authorise_resource for cancan in my version.

It's possible to pass lots more options to the scaffold generator in application.rb - you can find out about them in the rails guide Configuring Rails Applications.

And what you end up with is a lovely scaffold generator that produces appropriate files for your application. Makes scaffolding really useful again!

def foo
  puts 'foo'
end