What is Tractor, you ask? Why would you use it?
After downloading Tractor, you need to make sure you have the appropriate Ruby gems. To do this, we use bundler.
$ sudo gem install bundler
$ bundleNext you will either want to point your server at the app folder, or install Grunt (preferred method). To install Grunt you will first need Node and NPM installed. Then:
$ sudo npm installThis will download all of the appropriate javascript packages needing to create the server. Once this is complete you can run "grunt server" and Tractor will spin up a grunt server and open up the start page for you.
To edit the start page in Tractor simply add valid markup to the views/home.html file. All pages inherit the basic HTML structure of index.html which includes <html> <head> <body> and a <div class="page"> page wrapper.
Any html file placed into the views directory can be accessed by visiting <root_url>/#/file_name. So to create an about-us or blog page simply create app/views/about-us.html or app/views/blog.html file.
Terms specific to the functionality of Tractor.
To create a HTML snippet or "partial", just create a new html file in the views/partials directory. The partial may only contain a single parent element, but can have as many child elements as needed.
To include a partial into your homepage Tractor comes with a custom directive called . So if you have a partial called "navigation.html" in your partials folder this is the markup to insert into your home page:
<partial file="navigation"></partial>Note that you don't need to specify the view or partial folder as they are assumed, and you will also ommit the extension as it is assumed. If you decide to organize your partials into folders you simply include the path from the partials folder:
<partial file="path/from/partial/folder/navigation"></partial>Partials can also be called from within other partials. When doing so you will always specify their path from the partials folder, not relative to where the partial is (if the partial is inside a folder).
One of the most powerful features of Tractor is template inheritance. With it you are able to create various static templates and dynamically apply them to pages of content.
Template inheritance allows you to define all of your regions along with classes, ID's, aria roles in a single place, and use a set of regions for many pages.
Create an html file in the views/layouts folder. Best practice is to append the word "layout" to the end of any layout file name. A layout file will then contain all of the region markup for your page. Your homepage regions might look something like the following:
<header id="page-header"> </header>
<div class="container">
<div class="main-content" role="main"> </div>
<aside class="sidebar" role="complementary"> </aside>
</div>
<footer id="page-footer"> </footer>To convert this to a Tractor template file you will simply add a "region" attribute to each of the elements that you will be placing content into, and give it an appropriate name. Here is what your home_layout.html file will look once that is done:
<header region="header" id="page-header"> </header>
<div class="container">
<div region="main-content" class="main-content" role="main"> </div>
<aside region="sidebar" class="sidebar" role="complementary"> </aside>
</div>
<footer region="footer" id="page-footer"> </footer>Going back to our home.html page, there are 2 things we'll want to do in order to start using this template. First off we declare which template we want to inherit using Tractor's <template> directive:
<layout file="home_layout">
<img src="logo.png">
<partial file="navigation"></partial>
<partial file="welcome-copy"></partial>
<partial file="call-to-action"></partial>
<partial file="blog-links"></partial>
<partial file="footer-nav"></partial>
</layout>Secondly we need to place all of our markup and partials into a region using Tractor's <region> directive:
<layout file="home_layout">
<region name="header">
<img src="logo.png">
<partial file="navigation"></partial>
</region>
<region name="main-content">
<partial file="welcome-copy"></partial>
<partial file="call-to-action"></partial>
</region>
<region name="sidebar">
<partial file="blog-links"></partial>
</region>
<region name="footer">
<partial file="footer-nav"></partial>
</region>
</layout>When you visit your homepage you will now get the following:
<header region="header" id="page-header">
<img src="logo.png">
<partial file="navigation"></partial>
</header>
<div class="container">
<div region="main-content" class="main-content" role="main">
<partial file="welcome-copy"></partial>
<partial file="call-to-action"></partial>
</div>
<aside region="sidebar" class="sidebar" role="complementary">
<partial file="blog-links"></partial>
</aside>
</div>
<footer region="footer" id="page-footer">
<partial file="footer-nav"></partial>
</footer>This might seem a lot of work when getting started, but for larger projects you will certainly start to see significant benefits. If you happen to have several pages based on a single template this method will allow you to add/remove/change classes, ID's or other attributes from regions without having to replicate those changes across all of the files. You can also reorder regions inside of your template (move sidebar before content) without having to change the order of the content in all of your pages.