layouts and partials

rubyonrails-talk
1

I am currently working on re factoring my controllers and views to better follow the DRY principal. I have done significant work with the controllers but am struggling with the views...

I have the standard type layout, a header (includes a navigation bar), then the content, followed by a footer.

In the content section there is a title, basically the action name, and available actions followed by some dynamic content. The actions contain a create, list, and search button and other action specific actions. Right now those actions are defined in each page. I am trying to factor that out and create an action partial which will be shared amongst most of my controllers. How can I define a "default" list of actions and then when needed override those defaults?

2

one approach would be using content_for. roughly in your layout (or wherever you want) you define a yield

<%= yield :action_menu %>

and in the views you would then declare content for that: <% content_for :action_menu %>   <%= render :partial => "basic_menu" %> <% end %>

in another one: <% content_for :action_menu %>   <%= render :partial => "basic_menu" %>   <%= link_to "another option", ...path to option... %> <% end %>

or create them in whatever way you like, mixing partials with defaults and inplace code.

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/CaptureHelper.html#M001069

3

default scaffolding shows some code reuse, if that helps.

4

I have constructed something to that effect...

layouts/global.html.erb

<%= render :partial => "header" %> <%= render :partial => "navigation" %> <%= yield :actions %> <%= yield %> <%= render :partial => "footer" %>

so for my views i need to declare the actions, most likely should be in a partial... the standard list <% content_for :actions %>   <%= link_to "New", :action => "new" %>   <%= link_to "List", :action => "list" %>   <%= link_to "Search", :action => "search" %> <% end %>

then i could have a set of other actions that aren't ordinary. So i guess then in about 95% of my views i will have: <%= render :partial => "default_actions" %>

and sometimes additional renders for other action sets I may need. Now my problem is that because I don't always want to display the action menu, I cannot add the above render to my layout because then it would show all the time. So I would have to put the render in every one of my views when I want it. But seeing how it is needed more often than not, should I put the render call in my layout and a conditional statement to hide it when desired, I certainly do not want to clutter my views with conditional code when not needed. What would be the best way to handle this situation?

5

Or multiple layouts. I'd tend to put it in the global layout, myself, so I don't have to clutter the views with repeated code.