Question

I am very new to Rails, but have some Ruby understanding. How can I display the values of an array in a View in Rails?

Where should I define the array (model or controller)? Also, how can I reference the array and iterate between its members on a View?

Answer 1

You can just loop through it like:

<% @array.each do |element| %>
  <li><%= element.whatever %></li>
<% end %>

But it’s much more idiomatic to use partials. Create a file that represents the element. The file should be in the same view directory with the other new/show/edit/etc view and should be named with an underscore. For example, if I had a list of foods as the array and I wanted to show the list on the index view, I would create a partial called “_food.html.erb” which would contain the markup for a given food:

<div>
  Name: <%= food.name %>
  Calories <%= food.calories %>
</div>

Then in the index.html.erb, I would render all the foods like so:

<%= render @foods %>

Rails will look for the partial by default and render one for each element in the array.