give me a heads-up on my article teaser code.

rubyonrails-talk
1

I’m creating article teasers for my blogs main page and I am simple adding in my post.rb file the following…

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :comments

Before the form is saved we update the time to be more accurate

and format post_text to post_html using RedCloth/textile

***No need to add text to post_html field in the form, this happens automatically

def before_save self.created_at = Time.now self.author_name = ‘Nevyn’ if self.author_name.nil? or self.author_name.empty? self.post_html = RedCloth.new(self.post_text).to_html end

def teaser #return article teaser first paragraph teaser = self.post_html.slice(0, (self.post_html =~ /\r?</p>\r?$/)).rstrip return teaser end

end

my db schema has a ‘post_text’ and ‘post_html’ column, you can see above how I am using RedCloth.

But I am wondering since I am new to Ruby, if there is a cleaner way to do this.

Thanks,

2

Michael Steinfeld wrote:

I'm creating article teasers for my blogs main page and I am simple adding in my post.rb file the following..

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base   has_many :comments

  # Before the form is saved we update the time to be more accurate   # and format post_text to post_html using RedCloth/textile   # ***No need to add text to post_html field in the form, this happens automatically   def before_save     self.created_at = Time.now     self.author_name = 'Nevyn' if self.author_name.nil? or self.author_name.empty?     self.post_html = RedCloth.new(self.post_text).to_html   end

  def teaser     #return article teaser first paragraph     teaser = self.post_html.slice(0, (self.post_html =~ /\r?<\/p>\r?$/)).rstrip     return teaser   end

end

my db schema has a 'post_text' and 'post_html' column, you can see above how I am using RedCloth.

But I am wondering since I am new to Ruby, if there is a cleaner way to do this.

A few comments: * You don't need the line to set the created_at time - Rails does this automatically. * You can use: if self.author_name.blank? - nil.blank? is true, and so is "".blank? and " ".blank? * Instead of self.post_html.slice(0, regex-match-value), do self.post_html.slice(0..regex-match-value). This way if the regular expression is not matched and returns -1, you'll get the whole content of the post instead of nil. * Instead of doing teaser = ...; return teaser, you can just have the slice method: def teaser   self.post_html.slice(0,whatever) end

Hope this helps,

Dan Manges

3

Michael Steinfeld wrote:

I’m creating article teasers for my blogs main page and I am simple adding in my post.rb file the following…

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :comments

Before the form is saved we update the time to be more accurate

and format post_text to post_html using RedCloth/textile

***No need to add text to post_html field in the form, this happens

automatically def before_save self.created_at = Time.now self.author_name = ‘Nevyn’ if self.author_name.nil? or self.author_name.empty? self.post_html = RedCloth.new(self.post_text).to_html end

def teaser #return article teaser first paragraph teaser = self.post_html.slice(0, (self.post_html =~ /\r?</p>\r?$/)).rstrip

return teaser

end

end

my db schema has a ‘post_text’ and ‘post_html’ column, you can see above how I am using RedCloth.

But I am wondering since I am new to Ruby, if there is a cleaner way to do

this.

A few comments:

  • You don’t need the line to set the created_at time - Rails does this automatically.

Well, the reason I am using that is if it takes me 10 minutes to write the article, I don’t get the time since I clicked “Create New Post” I get the time that the post was actually submitted.

Guess that really Isn’t a big deal.

  • You can use: if self.author_name.blank?
  • nil.blank? is true, and so is “”.blank? and " ".blank?
  • Instead of self.post_html.slice(0, regex-match-value), do self.post_html.slice(0…regex-match-value). This way if the regular expression is not matched and returns -1, you’ll get the whole content of the post instead of nil.

Thanks for the tip! I should hope that it will always be matched, I mean if a post is created self.post_html should have at at least one set of

elements.

  • Instead of doing teaser = …; return teaser, you can just have the slice method: def teaser self.post_html.slice(0,whatever) end

Yeah the return teaser part comes from my python background :slight_smile:

And yes it was a help, Thank you!