Using helpers in rails 3 to output html

Question

I'm trying my best to build a helper that outputs a <'ul> consisting of all the members of a collection. For each member of the collection I want to print out a <'li> that has a title, and a div of links to CRUD the member. This is pretty similar to what Rails outputs for scaffolding for the index view. Here is the helper I've got: ``` def display_all(collection_sym) collection = collection_sym.to_s.capitalize.singularize.constantize.all name = collection_sym.to_s.downcase html = '' html << "

" for member in collection do html << content_tag(:li, :id => member.title.gsub(' ', '-').downcase.strip) do concat content_tag(:h1, member.title, :class => "#{name}-title") concat link_to 'Edit', "/#{name}/#{member.id}/edit" concat "\|" concat link_to 'View', "/#{name}/#{member.id}" concat "\|" concat button_to 'Delete', "/#{name}/#{member.id}", :confirm => 'Are you sure? This cannot be undone.', :method => :delete end end html << '' return html end ``` And that ou…

Accepted Answer

I agree with the comment above recommending the use of a partial... but if you DID need to do this in a helper, this is a cleaner way to implement:

```
def display_all(collection)
  content_tag(:ul, class: "list") do
    collection.collect do |member|
      concat(content_tag(:li, id: member.name.gsub(' ', '-').downcase.strip) do
        member.name
      end)
    end
  end
end
```

I'd pass in a collection explicitly rather than passing in a symbol to create a collection so you aren't always required to display ALL the records in a particular table at once. You could add pagination, etc.

Using helpers in rails 3 to output html

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