Moving View Logic into Controller

Rails
1

Hello,

Rails Best Practices is telling me to move some code from one of my
helper views into the controller. I was hoping to get some assistance as
I’m unsure how to do this and still have the application work.

The helper: http://pastie.org/private/pfub9iklus5ajuu1iwvfza

The report says I need to move the second and third lines into the
controller, but if I do that, how does the rest of the code know how to
work?

Thanks,
Andrew D.

2

Hi Andrew,

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Andrew D. [email protected]
wrote:

work?
Do your finds in the controller, assigning the results to instance
variables, and then access the instance variables in the view.

HTH,
Bill

3

Since I’m still learning, here is my attempt, is this what you are
trying to say?

http://pastie.org/private/hiqrzql2zb4qv5gr1drpa

I think I understand what you’re saying, just not sure if I’m doing that
correctly.

4

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Andrew D. [email protected]
wrote:

Since I’m still learning, here is my attempt, is this what you are
trying to say?

http://pastie.org/private/hiqrzql2zb4qv5gr1drpa

I think I understand what you’re saying, just not sure if I’m doing that
correctly.

Yes. That’s it. Do your best to keep logic out of the views. It
will make your application more testable. The selection of data sets
is one type of logic.

HTH,
Bill

5

Thank you very much Bill for your assistance, it is greatly appreciated
:slight_smile:

Andrew D.

6

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Andrew D. [email protected]
wrote:

Thank you very much Bill for your assistance, it is greatly appreciated
:slight_smile:

You’re welcome, Andrew. Welcome to the Rails community.

Best regards,
Bill

7

Bill, that doesn’t seem to be working. It seemed to be at first until I
tried to do more with the application.

My shared/_task_orders.html.erb

    <% @all_task_orders.each do |task_order| %> <% unless task_order.year != @last_task_order.year %>
  • &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp <%=h link_to "#{task_order.name}", task_order_criteria_path(task_order) %> - <%=h task_order.year %> Q<%=h task_order.quarter %>
    • <% end %> <% end %>

My task_orders_controller
class TaskOrdersController < ApplicationController
…
def index
@task_orders = TaskOrder.search(params[:search], params[:page])
@last_task_order = TaskOrder.find(:first)
@all_task_orders = TaskOrder.all
end
…
end

I’m getting:
NoMethodError in Criteria#index

Showing app/views/shared/_task_orders.html.erb where line #2 raised:

You have a nil object when you didn’t expect it!
You might have expected an instance of Array.
The error occurred while evaluating nil.each

Extracted source (around line #2):

1:


    2: <% @all_task_orders.each do |task_order| %>
    3: <% unless task_order.year != @last_task_order.year %>
    4:
  • &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp <%=h link_to “#{task_order.name}”,
    task_order_criteria_path(task_order) %> - <%=h task_order.year %> Q<%=h
    task_order.quarter %>

    • 5: <% end %>

    Thank you for helping me!!

    Andrew D.

8

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Andrew D. [email protected]
wrote:

Bill, that doesn’t seem to be working. It seemed to be at first until I
tried to do more with the application.

It’s working just fine. The error message is telling you that
@all_task_orders is nil. You just have to figure out why. The fact
that it is created in the controller makes it easier to debug.
Execute the commands in your index method from the console (ruby
script/console) and see what they return.

Best regards,
Bill

9

On 24 November 2010 19:05, Andrew D. [email protected] wrote:

Bill, that doesn’t seem to be working. It seemed to be at first until I
tried to do more with the application.

My shared/_task_orders.html.erb

    <% @all_task_orders.each do |task_order| %> <% unless task_order.year != @last_task_order.year %>

Not related to your problem, but if this is the only place you are
referencing the task_orders, and you have the test here so that you
only show some of them, you would be better to only pick up the
relevant ones in the controllers and pass that array to the view.
Then you do not need the test in the view.

…
def index
@task_orders = TaskOrder.search(params[:search], params[:page])
@last_task_order = TaskOrder.find(:first)
@all_task_orders = TaskOrder.all
end
…
end

I’m getting:
NoMethodError in Criteria#index

Why does that say Criteria#index when you have shown us
TasksOrderController#index?

2: <% @all_task_orders.each do |task_order| %>
The error message is saying that @all_tasks_orders is nil. I see that
this is in a partial, have you passed the data across to the partial.
The mechanism for doing this varies with Rails version. The Rails
Guide on Layouts and Rendering discusses the various methods for
getting data to partials. The other possibility is of course that
@all_task_orders was nil in the first place, possibly because the
partial has been called from Criteria#index and that route has not set
@all_task_orders.

Are you aware of how to use ruby-debug to break into your code (View,
Controller or Model) in order to check code flow and inspect data to
see what is happening? Have a look at the Rails Guide on debugging to
see how. This is invaluable and I strongly suggest you have a look a
this. It will save a lot of time waiting for response from the list
if you can just break into the code and work out for yourself why
something is not working.

Colin