DRYing my views, helper / method / something else?

Question

Have written some RoR sites in the past, but never bothered too much at DRYing up my views as it's only ever been me looking at the code.

Just starting a new site, that is likely to be a collaboration, and need help

I call this line multiple times in my views, and from multiple places.

<%= Person.find_by_id(rider.person_id).name %>

I'd like to be able to just do

<%= get_name(rider.person_id) %>

So I'd assume I'd put this code somewhere

def get_name=(id)
    Person.find_by_id(id).name
end

But where? I've tried in the model and as a helper, but always get nomethoderror.

Answer 1

try application_controller.rb

Answer 2

How about a method on the Rider class that just returns the name?

def name
   person = Person.find_by_id( @person_id )
   if !person.nil?
      return person.name
   end
   return nil
end

used as

<%= rider.name %>

or, you could use a static/class method on the Person class.

 def Person.get_name( rider )
     if !rider.nil?
       person = find_by_id( rider.person_id )
       if !person.nil?
          return person.name
       end
     end
     return nil
 end

called as

 <%= Person.get_name( rider ) %>

Note that I dropped the reference to the id in the view code.

Answer 3

You're wrong in naming this method. Why you put "=" sign in the method name?

You should call this code only in controller, and in the views, only render result. The best place for this method is a helper.

def get_person_name_by_id(id)
  Person.find_by_id(id).name || nil
end

Answer 4

Rails is all about convention over configuration. All of it's helper methods assume the most common options unless overridden. However ActiveRecord models don't have a useful default to_s.

Specifying the default action:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  def to_s
    name
  end
end

Now every time you try to evaluate a person instance in string context you'll get a name.

So

<%= Person.find_by_id(rider.person_id).name %>

Can now be replaced with

<%= rider.person %>

For anything else you can specify field and methods.