# Adding a menu to the application layout

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/adding-a-menu-to-the-application-layout/124241>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [December 27, 2007, 12:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/adding-a-menu-to-the-application-layout/124241 "2007-12-27T00:02:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/musty)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2007, 12:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/adding-a-menu-to-the-application-layout/124241/1 "2007-12-27T00:02:45Z")

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Hello all, I’ve been reading a lot of posts and most seem close to my  
problem but I don’t see the real answer. Appreciate any help.

GOAL:  
Populate the application.rhtml layout with a menu bar and also main  
content. The menu bar content coming from MenuController class and main  
content coming from other controller classes depending on what menu  
option was selected.

CODE:  
application.rhtml  
…  
\<%= render “menu/menubar” %\>  
…  
\<%= yield :layout %\>  
…

menubar.rhtml  
\<% for mbar in @menubar %\>  
\<%= link\_to h(mbar.name), { :controller =\> h(mbar.controller),  
:action =\> h(mbar.action)}, :class =\> ‘mainlevel’ -%\>  
\<% end %\>

WHAT WORKS:  
No problem yielding the action methods from various controllers on the  
application page when I enter the url manually.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK:  
Can’t get the menu to show up, I get ‘You have a nil object when you  
didn’t expect it!’ because @menubar does not get populated.

SOLUTION:  
I believe I’m taking the right approach but know that I need  
@menubar = Menu.find(:all)  
to be in a controller but which one as there are three that use the  
application.rhtml to populate it with content.

Hope this makes sense, please let me know if you have any ideas.  
Thanks…Bill

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**Author:** ![musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/musty)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2007, 1:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/adding-a-menu-to-the-application-layout/124241/2 "2007-12-27T01:55:20Z")

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Your approach is not going to work because of MenuController. For what  
I know, you usually have only one controller acting per request. If  
you need to switch to another controller, you usually do that trough a  
redirect\_to.

What you want is a Menu model. There you add all your business logic  
and create a method like menus\_for(controller). Then on that partial  
you can use Menu.menu\_for(request[:controller]) instead of @menubar.

Then if you want to create an interface to manipulate your menus, add  
items, reorder and etc you create MenuController.

You want to have all the data and business logic in the Menu MODEL.  
The MenuController would be used to manipulate the data in that model,  
ie add a new menu item.

That’s my point of view, how I would do it…

On Dec 26, 3:02 pm, Bill M. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/musty)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2007, 2:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/adding-a-menu-to-the-application-layout/124241/3 "2007-12-27T02:05:17Z")

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On Dec 26, 2007, at 5:02 PM, Bill M. wrote:

> Hope this makes sense, please let me know if you have any ideas.  
> Thanks…Bill

Hi Bill,

If this needs to be loaded for every controller, which it sounds like  
it does, you could put a before filter in application.rb (the  
ancestor to all controllers). It would look something like

class ApplicationController \< ActionController::Base  
before\_filter :load\_menu

def load\_menu  
@menu = …  
end  
end

Since you define the before filter in application.rb, it  
automatically runs at the beginning of all other controllers. If you  
want to control which controllers call it, take out the before\_filter  
line in application.rb and put it in each controller you want to call  
the method.

Hope that makes sense.

Peace,  
Phillip

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/musty)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2007, 5:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/adding-a-menu-to-the-application-layout/124241/4 "2007-12-27T05:50:43Z")

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Phillip K. wrote:

> On Dec 26, 2007, at 5:02 PM, Bill M. wrote:
> 
> > Hope this makes sense, please let me know if you have any ideas.  
> > Thanks…Bill
> 
> Hi Bill,
> 
> If this needs to be loaded for every controller, which it sounds like  
> it does, you could put a before filter in application.rb (the  
> ancestor to all controllers). It would look something like
> 
> class ApplicationController \< ActionController::Base  
> before\_filter :load\_menu
> 
> def load\_menu  
> @menu = …  
> end  
> end
> 
> Since you define the before filter in application.rb, it  
> automatically runs at the beginning of all other controllers. If you  
> want to control which controllers call it, take out the before\_filter  
> line in application.rb and put it in each controller you want to call  
> the method.
> 
> Hope that makes sense.
> 
> Peace,  
> Phillip

Thanks guys for your quick response!  
Phillip…I ended up taking your suggestion and it worked like a charm,  
just what I wanted to do.  
I really appreciate the help…Bill

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/77aa72/32.png) [@musty](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/musty)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2007, 8:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/adding-a-menu-to-the-application-layout/124241/5 "2007-12-27T08:43:31Z")

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Use the yield call with content for helper method

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 26, 2007, at 3:02 PM, Bill M.  
\<removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid