Rails view helpers in helper file

ruby-on-rails

Solution

Just a suggestion for style, I like doing something like this:

In your view:

<% display_services %>

Please note that the `=` isn't needed any more. The helper then uses `concat()` to append something to your page and the putting-long-strings-together thing is obsolete too:

def display_services
  concat("<div>")
  form_for @user do |f|
    f.text_field ...
  end
  concat("</div>")
end

Is it nessaccary to put the `<div>` tag into the helper. If you need a helper for embedding something into a block you could use some yield-magic as well:

def block_helper
  concat("<div>")
  yield
  concat("</div>")
end

And use it like this in your view - of course with helpers too:

<% block_helper do %>
  cool block<br/>
  <% display_services %>
<% end %>

Problem

I'm probably missing something obvious here but here's what I'm trying to do. From the view, I'm calling a custom helper function ``` <div> <%=display_services%> </div> ``` In the helper file with the display_services function ``` def display_services html = "<div>" form_for @user do |f| f.text_field ... end html << "</div>" end ``` I find that form_for method and f.text_field output directly to HTML stream without the div wrapper that I like. What is the proper syntax to output all the HTML in display_services? Thanks in advance for your help.

Original source