Need help understanding how to sort and view items through categories

rubyonrails-talk
1

This is probably an easy guess for some, but after searching the web for quite some time, I've concluded that I need help understanding this.

My case:

I'm creating an ad application where people can sell and buy items through their own ads. An ad belongs to one category, and therefore the question: When a user views all the current ads as a list (webisteurl/ads) - how do I make the categories show up next to that list like a clickable sorting menu?

Help would be very much appreciated!

2

This is probably an easy guess for some, but after searching the web

for quite some time, I’ve concluded that I need help understanding

this.

My case:

I’m creating an ad application where people can sell and buy items

through their own ads. An ad belongs to one category, and therefore

the question: When a user views all the current ads as a list

(webisteurl/ads) - how do I make the categories show up next to that

list like a clickable sorting menu?

I’m not 100% sure which part you’re stuck on. To get the association set up you need to look in to ActiveRecord Relationships, in particular has_and_belongs_to_many.

class Advert < ActiveRecord::Base

has_and_belongs_to_many :categories

end

Then in the view do something along the lines of:

…<%= @advert.content %>…

    <% for category in @advert.categories %>

  • <%= link_to [category.name](http://category.name), category_path(category) %>

    • <% end %>

You’d have a category controller; maybe using restful routes or a named route such as:

map.category “/category/:id”, :controller => “categories”, :action => “show”

In that controller you’d do:

@articles.find_by_category(params[:id])

And iterate over those articles in the view.

Depending on where you were stuck, hopefully that’s given you some hints to get you moving. If not, post back with more details.

Cheers,

Andy

3

It helped quite a bit actually. Thanks!