Question

How can I allow users to switch between different views of the same content using a selection menu. For example look at the right hand side of http://railscasts.com/. You can switch between list view, table view and grid thumbnail view. What would be a good way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

You could set up a partial for each view, and either use session to store the preference or simply use params.

def index
  # ... code here
  @partial = params[:view] || "default" # "grid", "list", etc.
end

In index.html.erb:

<%= render @partial %>

Then you would save each view partial in the controller’s views folder, e.g. _grid.html.erb, _list.html.erb, and _default.html.erb

EDIT

In response to a comment on this (now five-year-old) answer, I am rescinding/amending my original advice. It’s never a good idea to pass unverified params to render, because it has the potential to expose arbitrary data from your filesystem. Would instead recommend a whitelisting method:

def index
  @partial = whitelisted_partial || 'default'
end

def whitelisted_partial
  %w(grid list).detect { |str| str == params[:view] }
end 

And in more direct response to the comment:

render partial: @partial, locals: { ... }