Question

I am creating a section of my Rails application for the visually impaired. This requires me to create it using only text and links in order to make it easier for people using speech readers to navigate through. I want to use fields from an existing model to dynamically build a link_to command. I would like to be able to build a variable using several fields on the model that contains the text that a user clicks on and another field from the model which contains the link.

Here is the code in my controller:

MediaLibrary.find(:all, conditions: ["media_type_id < ?", 3], limit: 5).each do |media_item|
  @audio_links["link_text"] = "Audio of #{MediaCreator.find(media_item.media_creator_id).name} #{media_item.media_created.to_time.strftime('%A, %B %d, %Y')} at #{media_item.meeting_time}
   #{media_item.am_pm} - #{media_item.name}" 
  @audio_links["link"] = media_item.link
end

Here is the code in my view:

<% @audio_links.each do |audio_link| %>
  <li>
    <%= link_to audio_link["link_text"], '#{audio_link["link"]}'  %>
  </li>
<% end %>

I have also tried the following:

<% @audio_links.each do |audio_link| %>
  <li>
    <%= link_to 'audio_link["link_text"]', '#{audio_link["link"]}'  %>
  </li>
<% end %>

And this:

<% @audio_links.each do |audio_link| %>
  <li>
    <%= link_to '#{audio_link["link_text"]}', '#{audio_link["link"]}'  %>
  </li>
<% end %>

I have tried a few more variations but I either get the can’t convert String into Integer error on the link_to command when I attempt to display the screen or the links display with the text being displayed as the following. When this happens I get other errors when I click the link.

#{audio_link["link_text"]}

I have done a lot of searches on Stack Overflow and throughout the web. I have not found a single example of this being done anywhere. I have seen in older posts where there was a set_path command (2010) but nothing for recent posts. I have used html_safe! before and will add that to my code. I do not know if there is a problem with my code or if I am attempting something that is not possible. I sincerely hope this is possible because it will make it easier for people with speech readers to know what they are clicking on.

Any help with this would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You can’t do string interpolation in single quotes. Replace the single quotes with double quotes and your variables will be expanded properly.

For example:

<%= link_to audio_link["link_text"], "#{audio_link['link']}"  %>