Question

All, I’m trying to use the Bootstrap Navbar user choice to control the filtering of posts shown to the user.

The model includes an ‘expired’ field which is a date-time type.

Three choices are: All (no filtering), Open (show only open issues) and Closed (show closed).
Is there a way to do this without defining three different index.html.erb variants (DRY problem). The filter should show only closed issues if @post.expired < Time.now .. etc.

Stated alternately – can controller ‘know’ what the user chose, although Navbar, as i am using it, is simply a fancy navigation toolbar?

Thanks for any advice.

Answer 1

Typically this is done by including a parameter in the request, and looking for that parameter in the controller. The bootstrap navbar uses regular anchor links so you should be able to add parameters easily to them (modified example from the doc):

<div class="navbar">
  <div class="navbar-inner">
    <a class="brand" href="/some_url">List</a>
    <ul class="nav">
      <li><a href="/some_url">All</a></li>
      <li><a href="/some_url?filter=open">Open</a></li>
      <li><a href="/some_url?filter=closed">Closed</a></li>
    </ul>
  </div>
</div>

You can read the filter parameter in the controller by accessing the value of params[:filter].