Concepts

The Fiona 7 gem is based on the Ruby-on-Rails framework. It was designed with best compatibility with CMS Fiona in mind. When integrating the gem into a Rails application, permission management, the administration user interface, workflows, the TCL interface, and numerous other functions continue to work as usual. Switching over to Fiona 7 requires a Rails application using either the RailsConnector (“Fiona on Rails”) or an empty CMS instance.

Moving to Fiona 7 without using the Rails Connector requires an empty CMS Fiona instance. With the exception of the root object and exactly one format (object class), the instance must not contain any data.

The version numbers of the Fiona 7 gem correspond to those of the Scrivito gem. As an example, version 1.5.0 offers best compatibility with Scrivito 1.5.0. The major and minor version numbers of the Fiona 7 gem are reflected by two further places of the gem's version number. For example, 1.5.3.1 refers to the first version of the gem based on Scrivito 1.5.3, and 1.5.3.1.1 refers to the first successor of this version.

All APIs and programming concepts strongly follow those in Scrivito. However, Fiona 7 radically changes the way editors work. Most of the content changes can now be made in the preview (in editing mode), i.e. in place, directly on the delivered pages. Only few administrative tasks are still carried out using the classic interfaces. (Even these remaining tasks can be hidden by providing code.)

Two operation modes

The Fiona 7 gem can be operated in two modes, “legacy” and “standalone”. If you want to migrate an existing RailsConnector or FionaConnector application to Fiona 7, the legacy mode should be used. The legacy mode can also be useful for a Rails application if, for example, this application is meant to be operated with an existing CMS Fiona instance.

The standalone mode has been designed for new Rails applications that are operated with an initially empty Fiona instance. This mode offers the highest level of compatibility with Scrivito, so that the development of the application follows almost the same patterns as with a Scrivito application.

For further information, please refer to the Overview of the two modes.