Rails - Jan 2006 - view vs controller - data from multiple tables.

Hi all,

please pardon my question if it seems silly.. I''m trying pretty hard to
learn though. :)

I have 2 tables:

feeds (has_many feed_items)
feed_items (belongs_to feed)

Let''s say Feeds has 3 feed.names:  "Things that Start with
A", "Things
that start with B", "Things that start with C".

I want to print out, on one page, something like the following:

Things that start with A
  Apples
  Angels
  Acrobats

Things that start with B
  Books
  Bottles
  Bears

Things that start with C
  Cats
  Cars
  Cocoons

I figured out how to do this in a loop in the view, i.e.

Controller:

def index
   @feeds = Feed.find(:all)
end

View:

<% for feed in @feeds %>
  <h3><%=h feed.name %></h3>
  <% for feeditem in feed.feed_items %>
    <%=h feeditem.name %>
  <% end # end feeditem loop %>

<% end # end @feeds loop %>

Is this bad style?  Should I be pulling this data somehow in the 
controller instead?

I know it doesn''t really matter for a simple example, but I plan to
make
a fairly complex app (not insane, but a few dozen views by the time
it''s
done), and I''d like to do it correctly from the beginning. :)

Someone in IRC suggested, in the controller,

def index
  @feeds = Feed.find(:all)
  @feeditems = FeedItem.find(:all)
end

But then, of course, you get the entire list (A, B, and C) for each 
feed.. so that''s not quite right.

Any comments/suggestions appreciated.

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

bplus wrote:
> <% for feed in @feeds %>
>   <h3><%=h feed.name %></h3>
>   <% for feeditem in feed.feed_items %>
>     <%=h feeditem.name %>
>   <% end # end feeditem loop %>
> 
> <% end # end @feeds loop %>
> def index
>   @feeds = Feed.find(:all)
>   @feeditems = FeedItem.find(:all)
> end
Use eager loading (per 
http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html#M000715):

def index
  @feeds = Feed.find(:all, :include => :feed_items)
end

Then loop through @feed.feed_items in your view.

-B...

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