This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by David Heinemeier Hansson. Original Post: Rails for Strut-ters: Dealing with the view Feed Title: Riding Rails Feed URL: http://sedoparking.com/search/registrar.php?domain=®istrar=sedopark Feed Description: The knowledge diff for all things Rails Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by David Heinemeier Hansson Latest Posts From Riding Rails

Brian McCallister is doing an excellent job showing Strut-ters how Rails work by comparing it to their own environment. In this round, he’s taking a look at the oh-horror that is unleashing a real programming language on view logic. He finds that perhaps it’s not so bad at all comparing:

<% for invite in @invitations %>
...
<% end %>

...from Rails to the JSP approach of tag libraries with:

<%@ taglib uri="/tags/struts-logic" prefix="logic" %>
...
<logic:iterate name="invite" property="invitation">
...
</logic:iterate>

Indeed they do look similar. For more on that discussion, read my views on template languages and why the scriplet approach works in Rails.

As a sidenote, I’d like to suggest a few improvements to the tag/value mix that Brian has in his examples. For example, we could convert:

<form action="<%= url_for :action => 'register', :controller => 'rsvp' %>">
...
<input type="text"
name="invite_names[<%= slot %>]"
length="30"<%= "value='#{@invite.split_names[slot]}'" %>/>
...

To use a few more succinct FormTagHelper helper methods:

<%= form_tag :action => 'register', :controller => 'rsvp' %>
...
<%= text_field_tag "invite_names[#{slot}]", @invite.split_names[slot] %>

But that’s nitpicking. Brian is doing a fabulous job expressing the unknown in familiar terms. If you’re in need for something more visual on the Helpers, see this video demonstrating how to create a helper method in Rails.