Rails - Feb 2006 - RE: Applying list-item format depending on action (Diego Scataglini)

Seth,
It really depends how often you do that check.
If it happens only once or twice in your whole application, that''s just
fine.
If it happens more than that and in multiple controllers/views then maybe 
you want to create a helper for it.
Something like this: (didn''t test it, but should be working)
module ApplicationHelper

def current_id_select(controller, action)

( (params[:controller] == controller)  and  (params[:action] == action) ) ? 
'' id="current"'' : ''''

end

end

Then in the view you just go

<li <%= current_id_select(''admin'',
''list'') %>>List </li>

<li <%= current_id_select(''admin'',
''index'') %>>Index</li>

<li <%= current_id_select(''admin'',
''search'') %>>Search</li>

If this is what you wanted.

Btw, if this where links to pages, you could just extend the link_to to 
automatically add a class or id set to "current" if the link_to target
and
the params coincided.

Or you could put the [list, index, search]  in a hash like this
myhash = {"list" => ["admin", "list"],
"index" => ["admin", "index"]}
 and do something like this in the view
<%
myhash.each do |idx, pparams|
-%>
<%= "<li #{current_id_select(pparams[0],
pparams[1])}>#{idx}</li>" %>
<%
end
-%>

I would do this if the list of links/li was dynamic or db driven.

Then again if I was doing this very often I would probably create a 
component or helper like draw_left_nav_li or something like that that would 
encapsulate the whole thing.

I guess it depends. :D

Diego Scataglini