Question

Here is a code a *helper.rb. Instead of these 3 methods (they are working perfectly)

def years_of_birth_select(form)
    form.select :year_of_birth, (1..31).to_a
  end

  def months_of_birth_select(form)
    form.select :month_of_birth, months
  end

  def days_of_birth_select(form)
    form.select :day_of_birth,  years
  end

I tried to call only one method

  def date_of_birth_select(form)
    form.select :day_of_birth,  years
    form.select :month_of_birth, months
    form.select :year_of_birth, (1..31).to_a
 end

and it was called as

 = date_of_birth_select f

and it displayed only one select, :year_of_birth, select.

What did I do wrong and what should I do to be able to call date_of_birth_select correctly?

Answer 1

The form element that is displayed in the view is the return value of the helper method, which defaults to the last expression. In the first case, each method only has one line, so the result of form.select ... is the return value, and so the form select is displayed properly. However when you merge them into one method, the return values from the first two lines are not returned, so you only get the :year_of_birth select.

To get all of them you have to concatenate the return values (strings) together:

def date_of_birth_select(form)
  ((form.select :day_of_birth,  years) +
   (form.select :month_of_birth, months) +
   (form.select :year_of_birth, (1..31).to_a)).html_safe
end

The html_safe at the end is to tell rails that it should not escape the string, which it will otherwise do by default.