How do I group content according to date (Rails)

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to group contents that belong on a same date together for display, such that the date only gets posted once and in chronological order.

Something like:

14th October 2009
Item 3
Item 3 content

Item 2
Item 2 content

13th October 2009 Item 1
Item 3 content

How can I display that in view? (Assume that @items is being passed from the controller, which contains all the items)

I've tried group_by, but I can't get it to work as it seems to be arranging itself by the value of the day itself rather than together with the month.

The code in question: http://github.com/davidchua/Political-Watch/blob/master/app/views/items/index.html.erb

To see the problem in a live deployment, its at http://political-watch.org

Answer 1

items.group_by{ |item| item.created_at.to_date }

Answer 2

1) Replace the line 5 of app/controllers/items_controller.rb with:

  @items = Item.all(:order => "date DESC")

2) Replace line 3-14 of app/views/items/index.html.erb with:

<%  date = 1.day.from_now(@items.first.date.to_date) rescue nil # increment the day
    @items.each do |item| 
      if date > item.date.to_date 
        date = item.date.to_date %>
        <div style="background: #81BEF7;margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" class="rounded"><b><span style="padding: 5px"><%=h date %></span></b></div>
      <%end%>

      <p>
     <i><%=h item.time %> - </i>
      <%= link_to "#{item.title}", item.link %><br>
     <a href="/items/<%=item.id%>"><span class="subtext" style="margin-left: 55px">by <%= item.user.username %> | <%=item.comments.count%> comments </span></a>
    </p>

<%  end # end for items_each%>

In this approach you are using the DB for sorting and a simple comparison for grouping.

PS: I don't think it is a good idea to name your database columns as 'date'. In some of the databases 'date' is a reserved keyword.