I have a very simple idea, and need a simple “yes thats a good idea” or
“no, thats a bad idea, heres why”. I want to create a disp helper method
to display ActiveRecord objects. Quick example:
<%= disp(@user, :type => :multi_line_html) %>
This would produce:
<%= link_to “benj0323”, user_profile_url(:id => user.id)
%>
Ben J.
Registered on: Jan 1, 2008
or I could do:
<%= disp(@user, :type => :single_line_text) %>
This would produce:
benj0323 - Ben J. - Registered on: Jan 1, 2008
All that I want is a helper method to display the state / information
about an object. I simply specify a type depending on how I want the
data formatted. This is nice because I can instantly change how users
are displayed throughout the software if I need. A good example is if we
add privacy featured to the application, and a user can specify that
they do NOT want their name show. So I would go to that one file and add
in the conditional check to display their name or not, not this feature
is effective throughout the whole software.
What do you think? Good idea or bad idea? Or is there a better way to
conquer the situation I described above?
Thanks for your help.
On Jan 1, 3:30 pm, Ben J. [email protected]
wrote:
Ben J.
All that I want is a helper method to display the state / information
It sounds like you just need two view helpers (or partials). I’m not a
big fan of passing in a ‘type’ to a helper in this case. Mainly
because you’ll need to have a conditional in the helper, which could
just as well be two separate helpers. I’m not a big fan of using much
html in helpers and usually delegate that to a partial.
Robby
On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 12:30:23AM +0100, Ben J. wrote:
I have a very simple idea, and need a simple “yes thats a good idea” or
“no, thats a bad idea, heres why”. I want to create a disp helper method
to display ActiveRecord objects. Quick example:
<%= disp(@user, :type => :multi_line_html) %>
[…]
or I could do:
<%= disp(@user, :type => :single_line_text) %>
[…]
What do you think? Good idea or bad idea? Or is there a better way to
conquer the situation I described above?
It’s a common idea, but there are two better approaches. One is having a
set of modules that parallel one’s models, much the way helpers parallel
one’s controllers, that provide methods on the model so it knows how to
render itself. I swear there is a plugin to handle this and
automatically
extend models before views run, but I can’t remember the name. (It also
wouldn’t be that hard to write, though it could be a challenge to make
it
both dependable and efficient.)
The other, much simpler, approach is to have appropriate partials for
each,
e.g.:
<%= render :partial => ‘/shared/user/multi_line_html’, :object => @user
%>
or
<%= render :partial => ‘/shared/user/single_line_text’, :object => @user
%>
Thanks for your help.
–Greg