some success at last, and some questions

rubyonrails-talk
#1

Hi Everyone,

I've been using Ruby roughly since 2003, but I never could understand
Rails nor do something meaningful with them.
At last thanks to wonderful people from Rails Guides at
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html I began to
understand Rails.

At the moment I am trying to do Rails version of a website I made
recently using PHP.

I am trying to make series of tabs linking to other pages on the site.
An I have put following code in views/partials/_partail1 which is used
by view of each page, eg. views/page/page.html.erb

<%
def checkclass(path)
  uri=request.env['REQUEST_URI']
  if path==uri
    cl='current'
    #cl - class attribute in HTML <A> tag
  else
    cl='other'
  end
end
tabs=[['Home page','/'],
['How we work','/howwework'],
['Contact Us', '/contactus']]
%>
<!--**tabs start**-->
<%
x=0
tabs.each do |tab| %>
<%= link_to tab[0],tab[1], :id=>x+=1, :class => checkclass(tab[1]) %>
<!-- ^^^^^^^^^^^^-->
<%
end
%>

So here are my questions:
1 Is it appropriate to put such code here?
2 how can I display the link in the line above <!-- ^^^^^^^^^^^^-->
without using too many tag like this <%= %>. render :text and
render :inline don't seem to work, I either get error messages or
nothing at all.

#2

So here are my questions:
1 Is it appropriate to put such code here?

No. You don't really want any code in your view, other than the very
bare minimum. Sounds like you want to put a l lot of this in a view
helper

2 how can I display the link in the line above <!-- ^^^^^^^^^^^^-->
without using too many tag like this <%= %>. render :text and
render :inline don't seem to work, I either get error messages or
nothing at all.

Why are you concerned about using <%= ? It's the right tool for the
job

Fred

(PS: look at each_with_index)

#3

Thanks for prompt reply, I don't want to put any more code than that.
Just want a simple change of CSS style depending which page is being
displayed at the moment.

#4

Well you already have WAY too much code in the view, and that code
deals with stuff like urls/routing which really shouldn't be the
business of a view.

The way I approach the issue of highlighting the active tab (which it
looks like is what this code is trying to do, would be to have a
helper to generate the html, which uses either the controller name (if
there's a one-one correspondence between controllers and tabs) or a
current_tab instance variable set by the controller. And the helper
should use path/url helpers rather than coding absolute uris.

So something like this.

First make sure that routes.rb has a sensible routing for the various
urls. Just an example:

map.home '/', :controller => 'welcome', :action => 'show'
map.how_we_work '/how_we_work', :controller => 'welcome', :action =>
'our_process'
map.contact_us 'contact_us', :controller => 'contacts', :action => 'index'

Note that these route are just for example purposes, I'd probably do
it quite differently, but that's not relevant to the current problem.
In fact, the whole point is that the routing is something which might
well change over the life of the app, and that's one of the things
which makes view code like your starting point fragile.

Then in the controller(s) in the action methods which handle the
various end points

class WelcomeController < ApplicationController
  def show
      @current_tab = 'Home page'
  end

  def our_process
     @current_tab = 'How we work'
  end

end

class ContactsController < ApplicationController
  def index
     @current_tab = 'Contact Us'
  end
end

in a helper, probably application_helper.rb

def tab_link(tab_name, target)
   link_to(tab_name, target, :class => tab_name == @current_tab ?
'current_tab' : 'jtab')
end

def navigation_bar
   [
    ['Home page', home_path],
    ['How we work',how_we_work_path],
    ['Contact Us', contact_us_path ]
   ].map {|tab_name, target | tab_link(tab_name, target)}.join("\n")

In the view:

<%= navigation_bar %>

Again this is probably not exactly the code I'd come up with, but it's
close to what you started with and adheres much better to what the
responsibilities of routes, controllers, and views should have in a
Rails app. IMHO

#5

class ContactsController < ApplicationController
def index
@current_tab = 'Contact Us'
end
end

in a helper, probably application_helper.rb

def tab_link(tab_name, target)
link_to(tab_name, target, :class => tab_name == @current_tab ? 'current_tab' : 'jtab')
end

Is it OK to get rig of @current_tab from controllers and modify above
tab_link method to look like following code?

def tab_link(tab_name, target)
   link_to(tab_name, target, :class => target ==
request.env['PATH_INFO'] ? 'active_tab': 'other_tab')
end