Rails - Aug 2006 - persisting tree navigation

I have built a tree navigation for pages I have in a site, that loads 
the content of each page into FCK editor.  The parent nodes are shown at 
the beginning, and the child nodes are in display:none hidden divs that 
are toggled with scriptaculous bindup and binddown.  If the user clicks 
on one of the children, I want that div to remain visible on page 
refresh.  I''m pretty new with app programming, and I''m not
sure how to
tackle this.  I was thinking session, but I have a suspicion it might be 
easier?  I''ve tried setting an @display variable inside the for child
in
parent.children loop for the style, but I couldn''t get it to set the 
value outside.  The following is the code I have in the view:

<% for parent in @parents %>

    <%= link_to(h(parent.name), :id => parent, :action =>
''edit_page'')
%>
    <%= image_tag(''toggle'',:onclick => 
"Effect.Toggle(''child#{parent.id}'',''blind'');")%>
    <br />
    <div style=''display:none'' id="<%=
''child'' + parent.id.to_s %>">
    <% for child in parent.children %>
      &raquo;<%= link_to(child.name, :id => child.id, :action => 
''edit_page'') %>
      <%= link_to ''Destroy'', { :action =>
''destroy'', :id => child },
:confirm => ''Are you sure?'', :post => true %><br
/>
    <% end %>
    &raquo;<%= link_to ''new Child'', :action =>
''newChild'', :id => parent
%><br />
    </div>

<% end %>

and then this is in the controller:

  def edit_page
    tree_navigation
    if params[:id]
      @page = Page.find(params[:id])
    else
      @page = Page.find(:first)
    end
    @text = @page.text
    if @text == nil
      @text = ''enter some text''
    end
    render :action => ''list''
  end

  def tree_navigation
    @pages = Page.find(:all)
    @parents = []
    for page in @pages
      @parents << page if !page.parent
    end
  end

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.