Rails - May 2006 - How do I identify the initiating View from within a Helper?

I would like to call a helper method from my View to construct a sidebar 
menu. The menu is contextual, so ideally I would like to do something 
like this:

View
----
<%= sidebar_menu %>

Helper
------
def sidebar_menu
  case _calling_view_
    when ''_view_identifier_''
      ... build menu...
  end
end

where ''_calling_view_'' is the key that points to the 
''_view_identifier_'', if this this makes sense!

I could send a parameter with the method call (eg 
sidebar_menu(''search_screen'')), but I consider this redundant.

Is this possile? Is there a better approach?

-Lindsay

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Lindsay Boyd wrote:
> I would like to call a helper method from my View to construct a sidebar 
> menu. The menu is contextual, so ideally I would like to do something 
> like this:
> 
> View
> ----
> <%= sidebar_menu %>
> 
> Helper
> ------
> def sidebar_menu
>   case _calling_view_
>     when ''_view_identifier_''
>       ... build menu...
>   end
> end
> 
> where ''_calling_view_'' is the key that points to the 
> ''_view_identifier_'', if this this makes sense!
> 
> I could send a parameter with the method call (eg 
> sidebar_menu(''search_screen'')), but I consider this
redundant.
> 
> Is this possile? Is there a better approach?
The action name is available as "action_name".

As for the view name, all I can see after a quick look through
the Rails code is the variable "@first_render".  It''ll work,
but is undocumented, and so is not guaranteed to work in future
versions.



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