Notes on adding Refinery CMS engine to Spree

gistfile1.md

Refinery

Adding Refinery CMS into a main Spree application as a Rails engine - idea that all static pages managed by Refinery, for example to build all our footer pages

http://refinerycms.com/guides/with-an-existing-rails-app

Some useful info here but probably superseded by latest developments :

http://rohanmitchell.com/2012/04/spree-refinery-together-spreefinery/

Add refinery to bundle, gem install etc, then

rails generate refinery:cms --fresh-installation

Makes a bit of a mess of the migrations, all the spree ones reappeared, so needed to tidy up a bit before running

bundle exec db:migrate

Then check db/seeds.rb and make sure only the new refinery stuff will run (I commented out some spree load_seed calls)

bundle exec rake db:seed

Edit routes.rb to move the Refinery mount below the Spree engine

Check the initializers in config/initializers/refinery/ to customize your experience.

Setup User Authentication - this seemed to work well...

https://github.com/adrianmacneil/spree-refinery-authentication#readme

Sets the Spree.user_class = "Refinery::User" but to be sure I set it also in initializers/spree to ... Spree.user_class = "Refinery::User"

Issues

Issue when actually visting a refinery Page : undefined method `refinery_user?' when use with ActiveAdmin

Solution via google seems to be to add following to helper_method :refinery_user?

So seemed like a good idea to bring in all the helpers from both engines...

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  protect_from_forgery

  # share helpers across both Spree + Refinery controllers
  # helper_method :refinery_user?
  helper Refinery::Core::Engine.helpers
  
  layout 'spree/layouts/spree_application'
  
  include Spree::Core::ControllerHelpers
  include Spree::BaseHelper
  helper 'spree/base'
  helper 'spree/products'
end

This resolved most issues with using refinery within the spree_application layout apart from something odd with routes

Trying to go to a refinery page like http://localhost:3000/pages/customers, causes routing error in spree-core app/views/spree/shared/_search.html.erb ... being pulled in by shared spree layout

 undefined method `products_path' for #<#<Class:0xd3ab4b8>:0xd326ed4>

Extracted source (around line #2):

 2: <%= form_tag products_path, :method => :get do %>

This is a bog standard Spree route but it's not available to the refinery controllers. I presumed routes were global in scope, wasn't even aware that routes were controller specific.

TO FIND OUT are they - Yes, routes are indeed part of the namespace, so fix is to use

spree:products_path

Alterntative fix is to switch back to fully specified routes (e.g in spree/_search.html.erb with

<%= form_tag(:url => {:controller => 'spree/products', :action => :index}, :method => :get) do %>

TODO

How to include a refinery page as a partial ? i.e I want to create and manage my footer in Refinery but for that footer page to be included in the main layout and every page, so effectively rendered as a partial