Hello.
I am using auto-complete fields in my application and I found myself duplicating a lot of code.
Here is a sample of what I have in my view:
<%= text_field_with_auto_complete :model, :codeA, :maxlength => 35, :size => 35, :frequency => 0, :style => 'off', :autocomplete => 'off' -%> <div class=auto_complete id=model_codeA_auto_complete style='display: none'></div>
<%= text_field_with_auto_complete :model, :codeB, :maxlength => 35, :size => 35, :frequency => 0, :style => 'off', :autocomplete => 'off' -%> <div class=auto_complete id=model_codeB_auto_complete style='display: none'></div>
The models all look the same too:
class ModelA < ActiveRecord::Base self.table_name = 'modela'
def self.get_codes return ModelA.find( :all, :select => 'code', :order => 'code' ).collect {|row| row.code} end end
class ModelB < ActiveRecord::Base self.table_name = 'modelb'
def self.get_codes return ModelB.find( :all, :select => 'code', :order => 'code' ).collect {|row| row.code} end end
: : : and so on...
The only thing that changes in the methods is the name of the model, as you can see.
In my controller I have another set of methods to retrieve the necessary information for the drop downs and auto-completes:
def auto_complete_for_codeA @codes = ModelA.get_codes render_options(@codes, params[:model][:codeA]) end
def auto_complete_for_codeB @codes = ModelB.get_codes render_options(@codes, params[:model][:codeB]) end
: : : and so on...
'render_options' is another method that I got DRY enough and I don't need to make any changes as of right now. It finds matching values in @codes based on the second parameter value, then renders a partial.
As you can see there is a lot of duplication in all of this and I would like to make it as DRY as possible. The only thing I think can be done is to to modify all those controller methods by soft-coding somehow the name of the Model to be used and get something like this:
def auto_complete_for_codeA render_options(:ModelA, params[:model][:codeA]) end
def auto_complete_for_codeB render_options(:ModelB, params[:model][:codeB]) end
Then render_option would do all the grunt work converting :myModelx to a usable model name. If you know how to make this happen and/or have better ideas please let me know.
Thanks a lot.
Pepe
