Introduction Rails View Helpers:-

Rails applications often involve repetitive tasks such as generating HTML tags, formatting data, and handling complex logic within views. Without helpers, your views would be cluttered with code that doesn’t belong there, making them hard to maintain. Helpers help you adhere to the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle by encapsulating common functionality into reusable methods. This keeps your code clean, organized, and easy to maintain.

Types of Helpers in Rails:-

Rails provides two primary types of helpers: built-in and custom.

1.Built-in Helpers: Rails includes a wide range of built-in helpers that cater to various common tasks. Some of the most frequently used built-in helpers include form_for, link_to, image_tag, content_tag, and number_to_currency. These helpers simplify tasks like form generation, creating links, handling images, and formatting numbers.

2.Custom Helpers: In addition to the built-in helpers, you can create your custom helpers to address application-specific requirements. Custom helpers are defined as modules or classes within the app/helpers directory. Rails automatically loads these helpers, making their methods accessible in your views.

Creating Custom Helpers:-

Let’s dive into creating custom helpers in Rails. Imagine you have a blog application and want to display the author’s full name and email in various parts of your application. Instead of writing the same code repeatedly, you can create a custom helper.In this guide, we’ll walk through the creation of a Ruby on Rails application, “blog_app,” and demonstrate how to utilize custom helpers to enhance the application’s functionality and maintainability. By following these steps, you’ll gain a deep understanding of how custom helpers work in Rails and how they can streamline your development process.

Step 1: Create a New Rails Application:-

Let’s start by creating a new Rails application named “blog_app.” Open your terminal and execute the following command:

rails new blog_app

Step 2: Install Action Text:-

Action Text provides rich text editing capabilities in Rails. Install it using the following command:

bin/rails action_text:install

Step 3: Generate Author and Post Scaffolds:-

To demonstrate the use of custom helpers, we’ll create scaffolds for authors and posts. Run the following commands:

bin/rails g scaffold Author name email:uniq
bin/rails g scaffold Post title content:rich_text author:references

bin/rails db:migrate 

def new
@post = Post.new
@authors = Author.all
end

Step 6.2: Update the New Post Form :-

In this step, we’ll enhance the new post form to include the author selection dropdown.
We want to provide a user-friendly way for users to select the author when creating a new post. To achieve this, we’ll update the form to include a dropdown that displays a list of authors from which the user can choose.

<%= render "form", post: @post, authors: @authors %>

Step 6.3: Modify the Form for Author Selection:-

In this step, we’ll implement the author selection dropdown in the new post form.
To enable users to select an author, we’ll enhance the form by adding a select dropdown. This dropdown will be populated with author options from the list we loaded in the PostsController.

<div>
<%= form.label :author_id, "Choose Post's author", style: "display: block" %>
<%= form.select :author_id, options_for_select(authors.map { |author| [author.name, author.id] }), { prompt: "Select Author" } %>
</div>

Step 7: Utilize Rails Helper for Author Display:-

In this step, we’ll leverage Rails’ built-in functionality to display author information without the need to create a custom helper.Rails generates helper methods for each attribute of your models, including the Author model, making it easy to display author details.
Now let’s, open the app/helpers/author_helper.rb file and define your custom helper method:

module AuthorHelper
def author_name_with_email(author)
"#{author.name} - (#{author.email})"
end
end

Step 8: Update the Form to Use the Custom Helper:-

Modify the form in app/views/posts/_form.html.erb to utilize the author_name_with_email helper:

<div>
<%= form.label :author_id, "Choose Post's author", style: "display: block" %>
<%= form.select :author_id, options_for_select(authors.map { |author| [author_name_with_email(author), author.id] }), { prompt: "Select Author" } %>
</div>

Step 9: Utilize Helper for Post Author Display:-

Now, let’s add another custom helper to display the author’s name or “Anonymous” in the post index view.
In the app/helpers/posts_helper.rb file, define the post_author helper method:

module PostsHelper
def post_author(post)
if post.author.present?
"Created by #{post.author.name}"
else
"Created by Anonymous"
end
end
end

Step 10: Update the Index View to Use the Custom Helper:-

Enhance the post index view in app/views/posts/index.html.erb by utilizing the post_author helper:

<p>
<strong>Author:</strong>
<%= post_author(post) %>
</p>

Conclusion :-

Rails helpers are indispensable tools for simplifying view-related tasks in your Rails applications. Whether you’re using built-in helpers or creating custom ones to meet specific needs, helpers help you adhere to best practices, improve code readability, and reduce redundancy. By mastering the art of Rails helpers, you can build cleaner, more maintainable, and more efficient web applications. So, embrace the power of helpers and streamline your Rails development journey

swaz_ahmed

I am swaz_ahmed blogger on shadbox. I am influencer,content writer,author and publisher. Feel free to ask me any question and suggestions.