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rit.

Ritardando — immediate slowing down (abbreviation: rit. or more specifically, ritard.)

rit. is a standalone web application that allows users to edit and schedule content. Content is served up to a consuming application as a web service.

Design Goals

  • CMSes suck. We don't want our application to live inside a CMS.
  • Do one thing and do it well. rit. schedules content. That's pretty much it.
  • Don't be clever. We're not clever so we probably can't make a computer clever.
  • Be fast. Cache in rit. so that the consuming application doesn't have to.

Consuming Rit. Content

Install the rit_client Rails plugin into your app. Follow the configuration instructions specified in the rit_client readme.

Getting Started

See the Rit wiki for the latest information.

Ideas? Need help? Discuss here.

Development

RVM and Best Practices

Developed using RVM Ruby 1.8.7 and Gemset

$ rvm use 1.8.7
$ rvm gemset create rit
$ rvm use 1.8.7@rit

Terminology

Plate

A Plate is a class of content. A plate is identified by the combination of it's Layout Name, Instance Name and Plate Name. The names are used to classify and organize plates.

Layout Name

A class of pages. For instance, the layout for all help pages.

Instance Name

A specific page using a layout. For instance, the contact help page. The Instance Name can be blank for those layouts that have only one instance, such as a home page.

Plate Name

A content area on a web page. For instance, the body of the contact help page.

Plate Edition

A Plate has many Plate Editions. These editions contain content and can be scheduled.

Fallback Edition

The edition that is published if no scheduled edition can be found.

Publish

Flag used to mark that an edition is ready to be considered for publishing. Scheduling rules will take this edition into account.

Event

Plate Editions can be grouped into Events that can be scheduled. All editions take on the Events start time and and time.

Plate Set

A Plate Set is a template for generating a group of related Plates. For example, if a help page has a body plate and a left column plate, a user can generate an instance of both those plates from that plate set.

Consuming App

The application that makes web calls out to rit. for content.

Scheduling

Conflicts

When there are scheduling conflicts for multiple editions of the same plate, the start time is used to determine which plate gets published. The event latest start time takes priority.

If start multiple editions have the same start time, the most recently modified edition takes priority

Example

                1     2                  3      4
Timeline:  <----^-----^------------------^------^---->

edition 1       |-------------------------------|
edition 2             |------------------|

Edition start times:

  • time 1: edition 1
  • time 2: edition 2
  • time 3: back to edition 1
  • time 4: fallback edition

Example

                1     2                  3      4
Timeline:  <----^-----^------------------^------^---->

edition 1       |------------------------|
edition 2             |-------------------------|

Edition start times:

  • time 1: edition 1
  • time 2: edition 2
  • time 3: edition 2 continues
  • time 4: fallback edition

Example

                1     2      3      4    5      6
Timeline:  <----^-----^------^------^----^------^---->

edition 1       |------------|
edition 2             |------------------|
edition 3                           |-----------|

Edition start times:

  • time 1: edition 1
  • time 2: edition 2
  • time 3: edition 2 continues
  • time 4: edition 3
  • time 5: edition 3 continues
  • time 6: fallback edition

Example

                1     2      3      4    5      6
Timeline:  <----^-----^------^------^----^------^---->

edition 1       |-------------------------------|
edition 2             |-------------|
edition 3                     |----------|

Edition start times:

  • time 1: edition 1
  • time 2: edition 2
  • time 3: edition 3
  • time 4: edition 3 continues
  • time 5: back to edition 1
  • time 6: fallback edition

Publishing

The consuming app can retrieve the current content for a plate from the following URLs:

http://rit.app/published/<layout name>/<instance name>/<plate name>
http://rit.app/published/<layout name>/<plate name>

The consuming app can retrieve content on a specific date with:

http://rit.app/published_on/<layout name>/<instance name>/<plate name>/<epoch time integer>
http://rit.app/published/<layout name>/<plate name>/<epoch time integer>

NOTE: Retrieving content on a specific date is not currently cached.