Question

I am working within a Ruby on Rails app. I have a loop that creates divs like this:

<% @snorks.each do |snork| -%>
  <div>
    <%= snork %>
  </div>
<% end %>

And I need the output to have every other div be floated left or right like this:

<div class="left">
  Allstar Seaworthy
</div>
<div class="right">
  Casey Kelp
</div>
<div class="left">
  Dimmy Finster
</div>
<div class="right">
  Daffney Gillfin
</div>
<div class="left">
  Tooter Shellby
</div>
<div class="right">
  Dr. / Uncle Galeo
</div>

Additionally, I need to add a div with class="clear" every two divs, like this:

<div class="left">
  Allstar Seaworthy
</div>
<div class="right">
  Casey Kelp
</div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="left">
  Dimmy Finster
</div>
<div class="right">
  Daffney Gillfin
</div>
<div class="clear"></div>
<div class="left">
  Tooter Shellby
</div>
<div class="right">
  Dr. / Uncle Galeo
</div>
<div class="clear"></div>

I have researched, and found a few posts saying that the alternate classes can be accomplished easily by using cycle(), and that does work. However, when I use it in two places within the loop it stops working right and just outputs something like this:

<div class="left">
  Allstar Seaworthy
</div>
<div class="left">
  Casey Kelp
</div>
<div class="left">
  Dimmy Finster
</div>
<div class="left">
  Daffney Gillfin
</div>
<div class="left">
  Tooter Shellby
</div>
<div class="left">
  Dr. / Uncle Galeo
</div>

What’s the best practices way in Ruby on Rails to alternate classes in a loop, and also add something every other loop?

Answer 1

According to the documentation, if you need nested ones you name them. Otherwise they will both share the name “default” and conflict.

<% @snorks.each do |snork| -%>
  <div class="<%= cycle('left', 'right') -%>">
    <%= snork %>
  </div>
  <%= cycle('','<div  class="clear"></div>', :name=>"cleardiv") %>
<% end %>