Using the Shards Extension

What is Shards?

Shards is a Radiant extension that allows other extension developers to modify aspects of Radiant’s default administration interface. It does this by deconstructing each view (in the Rails, MVC sense) into hierarchical component pieces called “regions”. A developer may insert or remove view partials from these regions from an extension. This permits:

• Adding new user interface elements
• Customizing appearance using CSS
• Customizing UI behavior with Javascript
• Removing or replacing user interface elements

Basic usage

Shards regions are accessible from the Radiant::AdminUI object, which is simply named “admin” inside an extension class. They are organized first by controller name, then by action name, and then by region. For example, if I wanted to add a partial called “tags” to the “form_bottom” region of the Page editing screen, in my extension’s activate method, I would do this:

  admin.page.edit.add :form_bottom, "tags"

The add method also allows you to insert partials in specific orders, i.e. before or after an existing partial. Examples:

  admin.page.edit.add :main, "help_links", :before => "edit_header" 
  admin.page.edit.add :form_area, "categories", :after => "edit_page_parts"

Alternatively, you may access a given region directly using a dot or bracket accessor. Regions are essentially arrays of partial names.

 admin.page.edit.form_area
  admin.page.edit['form_area']
  admin.page.edit[:form_area]