Non-breaking space in drop-down menu

Rails
1

I have a select box with the options stored in a constant in my model,
e.g.
TRANS_CODES = [
[“PM Payment – Regular”, “pm”],
[“PX Payment – Regular, but skip periodic TA fee”, “px”],
[“LP Late Payment – made after charges were posted”, “lp”],
…

It works fine except that the little gap between, say, PM and the
following explanation disappears. How can I create a non-breaking space
between the codes and their explanations? Multiple spaces and tabs all
reduce to a single space. I tried “PM” + “&nbsp” + … but all my
attempts got syntax errors.

Help!

TIA,
Shauna

2

Shauna Haines wrote:

I have a select box with the options stored in a constant in my model,
e.g.
TRANS_CODES = [
[“PM Payment – Regular”, “pm”],
[“PX Payment – Regular, but skip periodic TA fee”, “px”],
[“LP Late Payment – made after charges were posted”, “lp”],
…

It works fine except that the little gap between, say, PM and the
following explanation disappears. How can I create a non-breaking space
between the codes and their explanations? Multiple spaces and tabs all
reduce to a single space. I tried “PM” + “&nbsp” + … but all my
attempts got syntax errors.

Help!

TIA,
Shauna

I haven’t had much luck playing with this and getting the select helper
to do what you want. However, keep in mind that you don’t have to always
use the helpers - you can build a SELECT of your own “by hand”, so to
speak…

Say you change your TRAN_CODES so it looks like this:

TRANS_CODES = [
[“PM”, “Payment – Regular”,
“pm”],
[“PX”, “Payment – Regular, but skip periodic TA fee”,
“px”],
[“LP”, “Late Payment – made after charges were posted”,
“lp”]]

Then you could do something like this and it would look the way you
want:

<select id="object_method" name="object[method]">
<% TRANS_CODES.each do |tc| %>
<option value="<%= tc[2] %>"<%= ' selected="selected"' if

@object.method == tc[2] %>><%= tc[0] + ’    ’ +
tc[1] %>
<% end %>

Replace “object” with the name of your model and “method” with the name
of the attribute this field populates. If you have a lot of these, you
could build your own helper to do it.

One big caveat - even getting it to work, unless you use a monospace
font for the dropdown, the spaces are not going to line up perfectly
like (I think) you want, and it’s going to look uneven.

c.

3

Thanks, Cayce.

I altered my TRANS_CODES definition as you suggested, then
cut-and-pasted your select code into my new.rhtml view then replaced
“object” with “payment” and “method” with “TransCode”. Here’s my result:

  • <% TRANS_CODES.each do |tc| %> > <%= tc[0] + '    ' + tc[1] %> <% end %>

    • But when I tried to run it, the Action Controller attempted to stick in
    .to_s in a few places (maybe this is normal?) and got the following
    compile error:

    … parse error, unexpected ‘)’, expecting kTHEN or ‘:’ or ‘\n’ or ‘;’
    if @payment.TransCode == tc[2] ).to_s); _erbout.concat “>\n”
    ^
    (the carat is pointing to the dot right before to_s).

    Can you see what I did wrong?

    Thanks,
    Shauna

    4

    Okay, that’s fixed, but now Action Controller complains about
    “uninitialized constant TRANS_CODES”. I looked it over again and I’m
    pretty sure my syntax is as you outlined it. Here are the first few
    lines and the last two lines:

    TRANS_CODES = [
    [“PM”, “Payment – Regular”, “pm”],
    [“PX”, “Payment – Regular, but skip periodic TA fee”, “px”],

    ["XX", "Manual Entry",                                       "xx"]

    ].freeze

    Thanks again for helping,
    Shauna

    5

    Shauna Haines wrote:

    Thanks, Cayce.

    I altered my TRANS_CODES definition as you suggested, then
    cut-and-pasted your select code into my new.rhtml view then replaced
    “object” with “payment” and “method” with “TransCode”. Here’s my result:

  • <% TRANS_CODES.each do |tc| %> > <%= tc[0] + '    ' + tc[1] %> <% end %>

    • But when I tried to run it, the Action Controller attempted to stick in
    .to_s in a few places (maybe this is normal?) and got the following
    compile error:

    … parse error, unexpected ‘)’, expecting kTHEN or ‘:’ or ‘\n’ or ‘;’
    if @payment.TransCode == tc[2] ).to_s); _erbout.concat “>\n”
    ^
    (the carat is pointing to the dot right before to_s).

    Can you see what I did wrong?

    Thanks,
    Shauna

    I think the problem is you are breaking an inline if statement across
    two lines.

    Where you have:

    >

    You need to keep the if statement and what it applies to all together on
    one line without a break:

    <%= ’ selected=“selected”’ if @payment.TransCode == tc[2] %>

    c.

    6

    Shauna Haines wrote:

    Sorry, I did find my last problem:

    I needed to precede TRANS_CODES with Payment::

    And you are correct, in a non-monotype font the spaces aren’t exactly
    right. But I can fiddle with that. Thanks for getting me past the
    logjam!

    Shauna

    Yep, you got it - Payment::TRANS_CODES - sorry about that it didn’t
    cross my mind.

    Glad to help. Bedtime.

    c.

    7

    Sorry, I did find my last problem:

    I needed to precede TRANS_CODES with Payment::

    And you are correct, in a non-monotype font the spaces aren’t exactly
    right. But I can fiddle with that. Thanks for getting me past the
    logjam!

    Shauna