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ListFu
======

A common pattern I always have when listing models in my views is as follows.

1. Have rails generate my model's scaffold
2. Replace Rails generated html table in index.html.erb going from

 <table>
  <td>
    <th>column one</th>
    <th>column two</th>
  </td>
  <% for model in @models %>
    <td>
      <tr>column one</tr>
      <tr>column two</tr>
    <td>
    ... actions ...
  <% end %>
  </table

to

  <ul>
  <%- @models.each.do |model| -%>
    <li>
    <%= render :partial=> "model" %>
    </li>
  <%- end -%>
  </ul>
  
where my model has its own default partial _model.html.erb.

This is ruby. I can do better than that.

Examples
=======

ListFu adds list markup behavior to your views through the method list_of.

A simple unordered list.

index.html.erb

 <%= list_of @models %> 
 
generates

<ul id="model_list">
  <li id="1_model">
    <%= render :partial =>"model", :object=> model %>
  </li>
  <li id="2_model">
    <%= render :partial =>"model", :object=> model %>
  </li>
</ul>
 
 
To further customize list_of it takes two hashes. The first being targeted at the html list element
and the second being targeted at each html list item. These options are basically what you get in any rails 
view helpers except for two items. The list hash uses the symbol :ordered to indicate that the list should be an unordered
or ordered list. This defaults to false. The list item hash uses the symbol :partial to indicate which partial to render. This defaults to the name 
the model's class.

index.html.erb
 
 <%= list_of @models, {:ordered=>true, :class=>"my_model_list_class", :id=>"my_model_list_id"}, {:partial=>"my_partial"} %>

generates

<ol class="my_model_list_class" id="my_model_list_id">
  <li id="1_model">
    <%= render :partial =>"my_partial", :object=> model %>
  </li>
  <li id="2_model">
    <%= render :partial =>"my_partial", :object=> model %>
  </li>
</ol>

Blocks 
======

If you don't like using partials you can use the block form of list_of which takes the same parameters as above plus a block
that gets passed each model at it iterates over them.

index.html.erb
 
 <% list_of @models do |model| %>
   <%= link_to model.attribute, model %>
 <% end %>

generates

  <ul id="model_list">
    <li id="1_model">
      <a href="model/1"> model_attribute value</a>
    </li>
    <li id="2_model">
      <a href="model/1"> model_attribute value</a>
    </li>
  </ul>


Copyright (c) 2008 softprops, released under the MIT license