Returning 'column' objects like content_columns does

rubyonrails-talk
1

I'm working on my first rails project after having gone through quite a bit of Ruby on Rails/Up and Running.

I have a model ‘Configuration’.

In the view that got scaffolded for me (I'm still back on rails version 1.2.3) I have a list.rhtml that looks like this

  <table>     <tr>     <% for column in Configuration.content_columns %>       <th><%= column.human_name %></th>     <% end %>     </tr>      <% for configuration in @configurations %>     <tr>     <% for column in Configuration.content_columns %>       <td><%=h configuration.send(column.name) %></td>     <% end %>

   [ snip ... ]

My Configuration table has many columns, and in the list view, I'd just like to show the 'important' columns. Initially in my model I defined

  class Configuration < ActiveRecord::Base       def self.important_columns           return [ :description, :rate, :duration, :host]       end   end         This didn't work, but I realized I'm returning strings, not objects. I modified the view to be

  <% for column in Configuration.important_columns %>     <td><%=h configuration.send(column) %></td>   <% end %>

But I now no longer have access to human_name for the titles. How can I get access to the column objects, knowing their names?

I thought I could perhaps figure this out by myself if I could find the source code for content_columns, but I couldn’t find it, any hints on how I might have accomplished that?

TIA,

Leonard

2

I'm working on my first rails project after having gone through quite a bit of Ruby on Rails/Up and Running.

.....

But I now no longer have access to human_name for the titles. How can I get access to the column objects, knowing their names?

I thought I could perhaps figure this out by myself if I could find the source code for content_columns, but I couldn't find it, any hints on how I might have accomplished that?

Look in the API docs for "content_columns". Then click the "source" link to see the method definition. For 1.2.5 it's this:

      # File vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/base.rb, line 781 781: def content_columns 782: @content_columns ||= columns.reject { |c| c.primary || c.name =~ /(_id|_count)$/ || c.name == inheritance_column } 783: end