Asset Customization - Developer Guide | Spree Commerce

Overview

This guide covers how Spree manages its JavaScript, stylesheet and image assets and how you can extend and customize them including:

• Understanding Spree’s use of the Rails asset pipeline
• Managing application specific assets
• Managing extension specific assets
• Overriding Spree’s core assets

Spree’s Asset Pipeline

With the release of 3.1 Rails now supports powerful asset management features and Spree fully leverages these features to further extend and simplify its customization potential. Using asset customization techniques outlined below you be able to adapt all the JavaScript, stylesheets and images contained in Spree to easily provide a fully custom experience.

All Spree generated (or upgraded) applications include an app/assets directory (as is standard for all Rails 3.1 apps). We’ve taken this one step further by subdividing each top level asset directory (images, JavaScript files, stylesheets) into frontend and backend directories. This is designed to keep assets from the frontend and backend from conflicting with each other.

A typical assets directory for a Spree application will look like:

app
|-- assets
    |-- images
    |   |-- spree
    |       |-- frontend
    |       |-- backend
    |-- javascripts
    |   |-- spree
    |       |-- frontend
    |       |   |-- all.js
    |       |-- backend
    |           |-- all.js
    |-- stylesheets
    |   |-- spree
    |       |-- frontend
    |       |   |-- all.css
    |       |-- backend
    |           |-- all.css

Spree also generates four top level manifests (all.css & all.js, see above) that require all the core extension’s and site specific stylesheets / JavaScript files.

How core extensions (engines) manage assets

All core engines have been updated to provide four asset manifests that are responsible for bundling up all the JavaScript files and stylesheets required for that engine.

For example, Spree provides the following manifests:

vendor
|-- assets
    |-- javascripts
    |   |-- spree
    |       |-- frontend
    |       |   |-- all.js
    |       |-- backend
    |           |-- all.js
    |-- stylesheets
    |   |-- spree
    |       |-- frontend
    |       |   |-- all.css
    |       |-- backend
    |           |-- all.css

These manifests are included by default by the relevant all.css or all.js in the host Spree application. For example, vendor/assets/javascripts/spree/backend/all.js includes:

//= require jquery
//= require jquery_ujs

//= require spree/backend

//= require_tree .

External JavaScript libraries, stylesheets and images have also be relocated into vendor/assets (again Rails 3.1 standard approach), and all core extensions no longer have public directories.

Managing your application’s assets

Assets that customize your Spree store should go inside the appropriate directories inside vendor/assets/images/spree, vendor/assets/javascripts/spree, or vendor/assets/stylesheets/spree. This is done so that these assets do not interfere with other parts of your application.

Managing your extension’s assets

We’re suggesting that all third party extensions should adopt the same approach as Spree and provide the same four (or less depending on what the extension requires) manifest files, using the same directory structure as outlined above.

Third party extension manifest files will not be automatically included in the relevant all.(js|css) files so it’s important to document the manual inclusion in your extensions installation instructions or provide a Rails generator to do so.

For an example of an extension using a generator to install assets and migrations take a look at the install_generator for spree_fancy.

Overriding Spree’s core assets

Overriding or replacing any of Spree’s internal assets is even easier than before. It’s recommended to attempt to replace as little as possible in a given JavaScript or stylesheet file to help ease future upgrade work required.

The methods listed below will work for both applications, extensions and themes with one noticeable difference: Extension & theme asset files will not be automatically included (see above for instructions on how to include asset files from your extensions / themes).

Overriding individual CSS styles

Say for example you want to replace the following CSS snippet:

/* spree/app/assets/stylesheets/spree/frontend/screen.css */

div#footer {
 clear: both;
}

You can now just create a new stylesheet inside your_app/vendor/assets/stylesheets/spree/frontend/ and include the following CSS:

/* vendor/assets/stylesheets/spree/frontend/foo.css */

div#footer {
 clear: none;
 border: 1px solid red;
}

The frontend/all.css manifest will automatically include foo.css and it will actually include both definitions with the one from foo.css being included last, hence it will be the rule applied.

Overriding entire CSS files

To replace an entire stylesheet as provided by Spree you simply need to create a file with the same name and save it to the corresponding path within your application’s or extension’s vendor/assets/stylesheets directory.

For example, to replace spree/frontend/all.css you would save the replacement to your_app/vendor/assets/stylesheets/spree/frontend/all.css.

Overriding individual JavaScript functions

A similar approach can be used for JavaScript functions. For example, if you wanted to override the show_variant_images method:

 // spree/app/assets/javascripts/spree/frontend/product.js

var show_variant_images = function(variant_id) {
  $('li.vtmb').hide();
  $('li.vtmb-' + variant_id).show();
  var currentThumb = $('#' +
    $("#main-image").data('selectedThumbId'));

  // if currently selected thumb does not belong to current variant,
  // nor to common images,
  // hide it and select the first available thumb instead.

  if(!currentThumb.hasClass('vtmb-' + variant_id) &&
    !currentThumb.hasClass('tmb-all')) {
   var thumb = $($('ul.thumbnails li:visible').eq(0));
   var newImg = thumb.find('a').attr('href');
   $('ul.thumbnails li').removeClass('selected');
   thumb.addClass('selected');
   $('#main-image img').attr('src', newImg);
   $("#main-image").data('selectedThumb', newImg);
   $("#main-image").data('selectedThumbId', thumb.attr('id'));
 }
}

Again, just create a new JavaScript file inside your_app/vendor/assets/javascripts/spree/frontend and include the new method definition:

 // your_app/vendor/assets/javascripts/spree/frontend/foo.js

var show_variant_images = function(variant_id) {
 alert('hello world');
}

The resulting frontend/all.js would include both methods, with the latter being the one executed on request.

Overriding entire JavaScript files

To replace an entire JavaScript file as provided by Spree you simply need to create a file with the same name and save it to the corresponding path within your application’s or extension’s app/assets/javascripts directory.

For example, to replace spree/frontend/all.js you would save the replacement to your_app/vendor/assets/javascripts/spree/frontend/all.js.

Overriding images

Finally, images can be replaced by substituting the required file into the same path within your application or extension as the file you would like to replace.

For example, to replace the Spree logo you would simply copy your logo to: your_app/vendor/assets/images/logo/spree_50.png.