Question

I have some code in one of my views like this. I feel that it has too many if else conditions. All it does is checking for the ActiveRecord Object’s status and setting the image. Is there a better way to do the following in Rails?

<td class="notification_msg">
  <% if notification.status == NOTIFICATION_STATUS.index("Failure") %>
     <img src="images/failure.png" style="vertical-align: middle"/>
  <% elsif notification.status == NOTIFICATION_STATUS.index("Success") %>
     <img src="images/success.png" style="vertical-align: middle"/>
  <% elsif notification.status == NOTIFICATION_STATUS.index("Warning") %>
     <img src="images/warning.gif" style="vertical-align: middle"/>
  <% else %>
     <img src="images/unknown.gif" style="vertical-align: middle"/>
  <% end %>
  <%= notification.message %> <%= cta_links_for(notification) -%>
</td>

Thanks

Answer 1

I’d pull the logic into a helper. Your erb:

<td class="notification_msg"> 
  <%= notification_image(notification.status) %> 
  <%= notification.message %> <%= cta_links_for(notification) -%> 
</td>

Then in your view helper:

def notification_image(status)
  name = NOTIFICATION_STATUS[status].downcase
  return image_tag "#{name}.png"
end

And of course, no inline styles. So put .notification_msg img{vertical-align:middle;} in your css file.