weakness of helper?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi ,       It comes to me that helper has some weaknesses:       1) It is hard to test . No easy way to write test code for it. (or Just i didn't know?)       2) Not easy to reuse it on other controller/view/model.

      it looks like to that putting the helper code into a model (a fully helper model , or a mixed model) is good practice.

      However i agree that some html intensive code still sites best in helper .

     Any idea?

thanks Kevin

2

Kevin Yang wrote:

Hi ,       It comes to me that helper has some weaknesses:       1) It is hard to test . No easy way to write test code for it. (or Just i didn't know?)       2) Not easy to reuse it on other controller/view/model.

      it looks like to that putting the helper code into a model (a fully helper model , or a mixed model) is good practice.

      However i agree that some html intensive code still sites best in helper .

     Any idea?

thanks Kevin

>

1) You can test helpers, using TopFunky's plugin (see http://nubyonrails.com/articles/test-your-helpers).

2) Well, you don't generally want to reuse them in models - they are View helpers, after all.

There's been some discussion about presenter patterns in models, but I don't see a consensus appearing yet (and there's way too much fu in those discussions for a relative amateur like me to have a view).

However, if you have a pattern which you genuinely need to have in both the controller and the helper (the current_user is a classic example), you can define as a provate method in the controler and then make available to the view by calling helper :some_method in the relevant controller

Cheers Chris

3

Chris T wrote:

Kevin Yang wrote:

Hi ,       It comes to me that helper has some weaknesses:       1) It is hard to test . No easy way to write test code for it. (or Just i didn't know?)       2) Not easy to reuse it on other controller/view/model.

      it looks like to that putting the helper code into a model (a fully helper model , or a mixed model) is good practice.

      However i agree that some html intensive code still sites best in helper .

     Any idea?

thanks Kevin

>>

1) You can test helpers, using TopFunky's plugin (see http://nubyonrails.com/articles/test-your-helpers).

2) Well, you don't generally want to reuse them in models - they are View helpers, after all.

There's been some discussion about presenter patterns in models, but I don't see a consensus appearing yet (and there's way too much fu in those discussions for a relative amateur like me to have a view).

However, if you have a pattern which you genuinely need to have in both the controller and the helper (the current_user is a classic example), you can define as a provate method in the controler and then make available to the view by calling helper :some_method in the relevant controller

Cheers Chris

Sorry that should be helper_method :some_method Doh!