Only display 5 items at a time with more button

Rails
1

I have the following code:

    <% @orders.reverse.each do |order| %>

  • <%= link_to_remote( "#{order.id} #{order.name}" , :url => {:controller => 'orders', :action => 'show', :id => order.id }, :update => "order_div", :method => 'get' ) %>

    • <% end %>

I want to create a button or link to scroll these order items by 5 at a
time. So it should display the first 5 by default. I will then be able
to click a button below and it should scroll the next 5, hiding the
previous.

I know this is a tall order. I’ve been looking into a lot of slider
plugins. None of them do what I want. Most of them only scroll content
one item at a time. The closest thing I used was easySlider (jQuery).
Cool plugin, but I didn’t know how to adapt it to scroll by 5 items at a
time. Plus, it messed up my css formatting and the items went all wonky
each time I clicked the button to scroll to the next item.

I’m using (for now) jQuery, Prototype, and Script.aculo.us. I’m running
different things from each JS library in separate parts of my app (to
get a feel for what I want to use), so any help to do this kind of thing
in any of these libraries will be much appreciated. I’m not stuck to one
or the other. Thanks!

2

Matt R. wrote:

    <% @orders.reverse.each do |order| %>

  • <%= link_to_remote( "#{order.id} #{order.name}" , :url => {:controller => 'orders', :action => 'show', :id => order.id }, :update => "order_div", :method => 'get' ) %>

    • <% end %>

I want to create a button or link to scroll these order items by 5 at a
time. So it should display the first 5 by default. I will then be able
to click a button below and it should scroll the next 5, hiding the
previous.

Nevermind. I know I should post this at one of the JS framework forums.
Only posted here to see if there is any way to take care of the Rails
side of things to cut down on the JS work.

3

On 1 June 2010 21:32, Matt R. [email protected] wrote:

Matt R. wrote:

<% @orders.reverse.each do |order| %>

First off; rather than reversing the @orders; why don’t you have the
finder that populates it order how you want? Seems like an extra,
redundant step to me.

Nevermind. I know I should post this at one of the JS framework forums.
Only posted here to see if there is any way to take care of the Rails
side of things to cut down on the JS work.

Then for your scrolling; you could use the commonly-used Will Paginate
to return “pages” of five orders at a time. How you render the pages
(with funky JS fading, etc) is your concern; but it’s not uncommon to
use RJS (or your own JS) to replace the content of a div with the
return from a controller.

4

there is a function called in_groups_of … there is a railscast
episode about it.
I have used a manual scrolling slider similar to what you want at the
bottom of http://www.conikitv.com/ where it will grab the first
hundred videos and display them in groups of 10 using the slider.

Basically the thinking is

  • Fetch the items you want to show
  • display them in groups of 10
    render how each group is displayed
  • render the container for each group

I hope this helps.

Links: #28 in_groups_of - RailsCasts
:
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/CoreExtensions/Array/Grouping.html#M001216

5

Michael P. wrote:

First off; rather than reversing the @orders; why don’t you have the
finder that populates it order how you want? Seems like an extra,
redundant step to me.

Thank you very much for the tip! I’m still getting the hang of Rails and
Ruby. It was a way that worked quickly for me, but your way makes a lot
more sense.

Then for your scrolling; you could use the commonly-used Will Paginate
to return “pages” of five orders at a time. How you render the pages
(with funky JS fading, etc) is your concern; but it’s not uncommon to
use RJS (or your own JS) to replace the content of a div with the
return from a controller.

Perfect! Thank you very much. I’ve been working on this problem forever.
Honestly had no idea how to achieve that functionality. I mainly wanted
5 items at a time. Didn’t really care how I got there (thought JS would
be the quickest, that’s why I posted this), so thank you very much for
the solution!

– Matt R.

6

Matenia Rossides wrote:

there is a function called in_groups_of … there is a railscast
episode about it.
I have used a manual scrolling slider similar to what you want at the
bottom of http://www.conikitv.com/ where it will grab the first
hundred videos and display them in groups of 10 using the slider.

Basically the thinking is

  • Fetch the items you want to show
  • display them in groups of 10
    render how each group is displayed
  • render the container for each group

For efficiencies sake you shouldn’t fetch all the items up-front. The
user may never scroll/page past the first couple of groups. Better to
use will_paginate to fetch the additional groups.