Walter

Product tours like a badass.

Walter White icon by Icons8

Walter makes it easy to show guided tours to users of your Rails application. When Walter shows a tour, it keeps track of whether the user has completed it (so it doesn't get shown again) or dismissed it for later (so it reappears in a future user session).

• Define tour content with simple YAML files, in any/many languages.
• Organize tours by controller and action.
• Trigger tours automatically on page load or manually via JavaScript method.
• Built with the Shepherd JS library. Plays nicely with Turbolinks.
• Ships with two basic CSS themes (default & dark) — or write your own
• Show video/html content in your

Requirements

• Walter needs to know the current user to track tour views, e.g. current_user from Devise.
• Walter is tested on Rails 5.2, 6.0, and 6.1

Installation

Add walter to your Gemfile:

gem 'walter'

Install the gem and run the installer:

$ bundle install
$ rails generate walter:install
$ rails db:migrate

Install the JavaScript dependencies:

$ yarn add js-cookie@^2.2.0 shepherd.js@^6.0.0-beta

Require walter in app/assets/javascripts/application.js

//= require walter

Require a CSS theme in app/assets/stylesheets/application.scss

*= require walter/theme-default

Walter provides the following themes:

• theme-default
• theme-dark

Update config/walter.yml if you choose a different theme:

defaults: &defaults
  :tour_options: '{ defaultStepOptions: { classes: "theme-dark" } }'

You can also write your own Shepherd theme based on Shepherd's default CSS.

Tell Walter where to insert its generated JavaScript in app/views/layouts/application.html.erb, just before the closing body tag:

<%= walter_tour %>
</body>
</html>

Defining your tours

Define your tours in the app/tours directory corresponding to the views defined in your application. Its directory structure mirrors your application's controllers, and the tour files mirror your actions/views. (As of version 2.4.0, Walter respects controllers organized into modules.)

app/
└── tours/
    ├── admin/
    │   └── articles/  
    │       └── edit.en.yml    
    ├── blog/
    │   ├── show.en.yml
    │   └── show.es.yml    
    └── articles/
        ├── index.en.yml
        ├── index.es.yml
        ├── show.en.yml
        └── show.es.yml

For example, per above, when a Spanish-speaking user visits /articles/, they'll see the tours defined by config/tours/articles/index.es.yml.

(Note: You must specify a locale in the filename, even if you're only supporting one language.)

Tour content

Within a tour file, each tour is composed of a series of steps. A step may have a title and must have text. You may attach a step to a particular element on the page, and place the callout in a particular position.

In this example, we define a tour called "intro" with 3 steps:

intro:
  steps:
    1:
      text: "Welcome to your dashboard! This is where we'll highlight key information to manage your day."
    2:
      title: "Events"
      text: "If you're participating in any events today, we'll show that here."
      attachTo:
        element: ".dashboard-events"
        placement: "right"
    3:
      title: "Search"
      text: "You can find anything else by using the search bar."
      attachTo:
        element: ".navbar-primary form"
        placement: "bottom"

Walter takes care of which buttons should appear with each step:

• "Later" and "Continue" buttons on the first step
• "Exit", "Back" and "Continue" buttons on intermediate steps
• "Done" button on the last step

When you specify an attachTo element, use the placement option to choose where the callout should appear relative to that element:

• bottom / bottom center
• bottom left
• bottom right
• center / middle / middle center
• left / middle left
• right / middle right
• top / top center
• top left
• top right

Walter tries to be helpful when your tour steps attach to page elements that are missing:

• If your first step is attached to a particular element, and that element is not present on the page, the tour won't start. (#28)
• If your tour has an intermediate step attached to a missing element, Walter will skip that step and automatically show the next. (#6)

Automatic vs. manual tours

By default, Walter will automatically start a tour that the current user hasn't seen yet. You can instead define a tour to be triggered manually using the trigger option:

walkthrough:
  trigger: "manual"
  steps:
    1:
      text: "This walkthrough will show you how to..."

This tour will not start automatically; instead, use the Walter.startTour method with the tour name:

<button id="startTour">Start tour</button>

<script>
  document.querySelector("#startTour").addEventListener("click", function() {
    Walter.startTour("walkthrough"));
  });
</script>

...or if you happen to use jQuery:

<script>
  $("#startTour").on("click", function() { Walter.startTour('walkthrough'); })
</script>

Testing your tours

Walter loads tour definitions once when you start your server. Restart your server to see tour changes.

If you'd like to run JavaScript integrations tests without the Walter tours getting in the way, clear the Walter configuration in your test helper, e.g.

Rails.application.configure do
  config.walter.tours = {}
end