I've taken a useful snippet for creating lists from the blog below and turned it into something that can create a nested list from an array of arrays. Thought I'd share it since some of you might find it useful and I also wanted to know if anybody can improve it (in general and also add the ability to use the "cycle helper" by passing it into the helper).
Inspiration: http://termos.vemod.net/list-helper-for-rails
Here's the code:
def html_list(type, elements, options = {}) items = elements.map do |element| if element.is_a?(Array) element = html_list(type, element, options) else content_tag("li", element) end end content_tag(type, items, options) end
def ul(*args) html_list("ul", *args) end
def ol(*args) html_list("ol", *args) end
This uses recursion so you can pass it an array of arrays.
So, this: <%= ul ["first", "first", ["second", ["third", "third", "third"], "second", "second", ["third", "third", "third", ["fourth", "fourth", "fourth"]]]] %>
Becomes this (properly nested):
<ol> <li>first</li> <ol> <li>third</li>
<ol> <li>second</li> </ol>
<li>third</li>
<li>third</li>
<ol> <li>second</li> </ol>
</ol> </ol>
The writeup: http://blog.labratz.net/articles/2007/3/23/back-from-the-abyss-a-helper-to-create-nested-lists