Question

Extreme Ruby/Rails novice here: I’m trying to link_to a search action for each individual post contained in a block:

<% split_tags = post.tags.split(',') %> # returns ["food", "computers", "health"] %>
<p>Keywords: <%= split_tags.each {|tag| link_to(tag, front_search_tag_path(:tag => tag))}) %></p>

but all it returns is Keywords: ["food", "computers", "health"].
Shouldn’t .each iterate over the array and provide a link to each search_tag_path with the tag as a parameter?

Answer 1

Nope, #each just performs a block, it does not accumulate any data.

[1, 2, 3].each{ |n| "Link to item #{n}" } #=> [1, 2, 3]

You have two options, use map to accumulate data:

[1, 2, 3].map{ |n| "Link to item #{n}" }.join("\n") #=> "Link to item 1\nLink to item 2\nLink to item 3"

Or output directly in the block:

[1, 2, 3].each{ |n| puts "Link to item #{n}" }

Prints:

Link to item 1
Link to item 2
Link to item 3

In your case this would be the following two options. I prefer the latter.

<p>Keywords: <%=raw split_tags.map{|tag| link_to(tag)}.join %></p>

<p> Keywords:
  <% split_tags.each do |tag| %>
    <%= link_to(tag) %>
  <% end %>
</p>