Custom helpers for list of options?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi all,

I have a model that "belongs_to" many other models, many of those models are just list of names, like country, state, city, profession ... I read about the country_select helper.

Is better to have all those tables or use custom helpers? what the rails way?

Thanks.

For example : Parked at Loopia

# = Schema # country_id integer # city_id integer # state_id integer # profession_id integer # category_id integer # ......

class User < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :country, :city, :state   belongs_to :profession, :category, :subcategory end

=========== VS

# = Schema # country :string # city :string # state :string # profession :string # category :string # ......

class User < ActiveRecord::Base end

class ApplicationHelper   def city_select (...)   end   # ....   # .... end

2

I use tables and then just have helpers that build the arrays for the select_options for the view.

For example, I have a table for languages and I have this in my helper:

  def language_options     Language.find(:all, :order => "language").collect {|l| [ l.language, l.id ]}   end

Then from my view:

<%= select 'document', 'language_id', language_options %>

Hope this helps.