Pagination vs. Tags for viewing featured items

rubyonrails-talk
1

Goal: - Label certain "items" in the database as "featured." - View the "featured items" on a list page - On the list page, each "featured item" links to a item show page. - On each "featured item" show page, there are links to show the previous or next "featured item" - The show "previous featured item" and show "next featured item" links should be automagicly generated in the layout.

There are probably a number of ways to accomplish this, but my big n00b is getting in the way.

First Guess: Pagination Module My first guess was that I could use something within the Pagination module, but so far Pagination appears to be limited to taking all the "items" in the database, and showing them in order by id in sets of a X number of items.

I don't see a pagination option for labeling certain items as "featured" and then listing only those items, nor a way of placing links in the view so as to store the position within the "featured item list" as the browser moves from "featured item" page to "featured item" page.

Second Guess: Acts_as_Taggable Plugin Second, I tried using the act_as_taggable plugin (not gem) and then the act_as_taggable_on_steroids plugin. This pretty much fell apart from the start since I spent most of the day hunting down missing setup instructions.

The wiki HowTo says one thing, the on_steroids site says another. Neither seems to include all the information necessary to set the plugin up. I tried following the "Rails Recipes" book (The Pragmatic Programmer has a free PDF download of Chapter 19) but it is embellished with trips to the "ruby script/console", layered partials, and ajax -- all of which really confused me.

If I go this route, it seems like I need a join table, but not a table1_table2 join table, but instead a special join table named "taggings".

Anyway, I am starting to whine more than ask for help, so ... help ... anyone?

My best guess at this point is:   1. Create a tags table with an "id" field as primary key and "name" field   2. Create a tag named "featured"   3. ?? Use a join table between tags_items to tag specific "items" as "featured"   4. ?? Controller: Some how assemble an array of only the "featured items"   5. ?? View: Index page renders each featured_item in @featured_items   6. ?? View: Item page somehow set the previous/next links to current_array_item +-1   7. Weep for joy that someone helped me get it to work.

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If I got it right, you can use pagination (pagination helper is not necessary)

Controller @featured = Item.find(:all, :conditions => “type=‘featured’”, :limit => 1, :offset => #{page})

@total_featured = Item.count(“id”, “type=‘featured’”)

View Previous

Next You need some checks to for the previous/next links. G.

3

Thanks for the suggestion Bandito. Your code got me started thinking in the right direction. I'm not sure I totally grasped what you proposed, but it did help me get the first chunk of my goal done.

I walked away from the act_as_taggable / act_as_taggable_on_steroids plugins. I don't need a full tag system, so why implement one.

        > Goal:         > - Label certain "items" in the database as "featured."         > - View the "featured items" on a list page         > - On the list page, each "featured item" links to a item show page.

Instead I add a column named "featured" to my "items" databasea nd assigned a few items to have a "featured" value of 1 (e.g. 1 = yes, 0 = no).

    ALTER TABLE items ADD featured int(1) NOT NULL

    UPDATE items SET featured = 1 WHERE id = 5

Then in my controller:

    def list         @items = Item.find(:all)

        featured_items =

        for item in @items             if item.featured == 1                 featured_items << item             end         end

        @features = featured_items     end

Then in my "list" view:

    <div class="item-thumbnails">         <% for feature in @features -%>             <% for image in feature.images -%>                 <% if image.position == 5 -%>                     <%= link_to( image_tag( image.file_name, :title => feature.title, :alt => image.alt ),                                                         {:action => 'show', :id => feature.id} ) -%>                 <% end-%>             <% end-%>         <% end-%>     </div> <!-- end .item-thumbnails -->

Obviously I had a pre-existing relationship between items and images that persists when an item is inside the @features array. There is probably a way to move some of this code back to the controller, but I haven't gotten anything to work quite yet. I wish I had a better programming foundation. It will come in time with practice I guess?

So now with that working, my next set of goals are:

        > - On each "featured item" show page,             there are links to show the previous or next "featured item"

        > - The show "previous featured item" and show "next featured item"            links should be automagicly generated in the layout.

This is where I think Bandito has filled in some blanks. I didn't have the @features array populated with data before.

Now I *think* I need to use the "limit and offset" to move through the @features array one at a time using the simple math in the anchor element bandito provided.

Wish me luck. More advise is always appreciated. And again, thank you Bandito.