Rails - Jan 2005 - Where to put code for layouts?

Hi all!

I want to show a list of all available categories on various pages. 
Thus I put the HTML-code into a layout. In order to get the list of 
categories I have to talk to the database using AR. The question now 
is: where to put that code? My first idea was to put the code into 
ApplicationHelper:

module ApplicationHelper
   def categories
     return Category.find_all
   end
end

Since I need the model Category I though "well, there''s this new
cool
dependency feature" and wrote:

module ApplicationHelper
   module :category
   def categories
     return Category.find_all
   end
end

This, however, only works for controllers and not helpers. Therefore 
the correct way is:

require ''Category''
module ApplicationHelper
   def categories
     return Category.find_all
   end
end

Personally I find this a little bit confusing because controllers use 
the "model :" approach whereas helpers must use the old-style
"require"
approach. If you know what to do it''s ok. Newbies on the other hand 
might be confused a little bit first (when to use what)?

Yours,
Lars

--
"Stil ist die Fähigkeit, komplizierte Dinge einfach zu sagen - nicht 
umgekehrt." -- Cocteau, Jean

Lars Hoss wrote:
> Personally I find this a little bit confusing because controllers use 
> the "model :" approach whereas helpers must use the old-style
"require"
> approach. If you know what to do it''s ok. Newbies on the other
hand
> might be confused a little bit first (when to use what)?
You''ll want to do the

   model :category

thing within controller/application.rb, rather than from the helper 
itself in this case.


Kind regards,

-- 
Marten Veldthuis

My suggestion would be to populate @categories with a before_filter
defined in the parent class.  Then your layouts can just reference
them as per normal.   This sticks with the MVC pattern.

Controllers prepare models for the views to render.

In practise you may want to use a helper to find_all,  but it seems
''messy'' to me.

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 22:24:35 +0100, Lars Hoss
<woeye-DgJLf6aGC0jR7s880joybQ@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> I want to show a list of all available categories on various pages.
> Thus I put the HTML-code into a layout. In order to get the list of
> categories I have to talk to the database using AR. The question now
> is: where to put that code? My first idea was to put the code into
> ApplicationHelper:
> 
> module ApplicationHelper
>    def categories
>      return Category.find_all
>    end
> end
> 
> Since I need the model Category I though "well, there''s this
new cool
> dependency feature" and wrote:
> 
> module ApplicationHelper
>    module :category
>    def categories
>      return Category.find_all
>    end
> end
> 
> This, however, only works for controllers and not helpers. Therefore
> the correct way is:
> 
> require ''Category''
> module ApplicationHelper
>    def categories
>      return Category.find_all
>    end
> end
> 
> Personally I find this a little bit confusing because controllers use
> the "model :" approach whereas helpers must use the old-style
"require"
> approach. If you know what to do it''s ok. Newbies on the other
hand
> might be confused a little bit first (when to use what)?
> 
> Yours,
> Lars
> 
> --
> "Stil ist die Fähigkeit, komplizierte Dinge einfach zu sagen - nicht
> umgekehrt." -- Cocteau, Jean
> _______________________________________________
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> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
> 

-- 
Cheers

Koz