Question

I have the following code in one of my Rails 3 application views:

<ul>
<li style="position:relative">
<b>MR</b> - 18 Jun. 2012 -  11:07<br />
<p style="width:85%">Paid by Cheque  000562</p>
<span style="position:absolute;top:0px;right:0px;text-align:right">&pound;0,00<br /><b>Balance: -&pound;7,36</b></span>
</li>
<hr />
<li style="position:relative">
<b>JJ</b> - 01 May. 2012 -  09:35<br />
<p style="width:85%">label 2 Packets Recovery -Rabbit</p>
<span style="position:absolute;top:0px;right:0px;text-align:right">&pound;0,00<br /><b>Balance: &pound;7,36</b></span>
</li>
<hr />

This displays the content as follows:

The raw Rails code is as follows:

<ul>
<% @animal.clinicals.each do |clinical| %>
<li>
<b><%= clinical.UserID %></b> - <%= clinical.FullDateTime.strftime("%d %b. %Y -  %H:%M") %><br />
<p><%= clinical.ClinicalText %></p>
<span><%= number_to_currency(clinical.Fees, :unit => "&pound;", :separator => ",", :delimiter => "") %><br /><b>Balance: <%= number_to_currency(clinical.LineBalance, :unit => "&pound;", :separator => ",", :delimiter => "") %></b></span>
</li>
<hr />
<% end %>
</ul>  

What I am trying to do is alter the HTML code depending on the values in the ClinicalText field. For example, the following are possible entries to that field:

label 2 Packets Recovery -Rabbit
Surcharge (Credit)
disp 250 Tabs...

So, if the ClinicalText contains ‘label’ at the beginning I would like to remove the word label and add a css style to the li. Likewise, if it contains ‘Surcharge’ or ‘disp’ I would like to add different css styles to the li.

I can think of a way of doing this using if, else and elseif statements in the view but I would prefer this to be in a helper of some kind.

Any pointers would be appreciated!

Answer 1

I’d write a helper that generates the whole <p> tag – that’ll make it easier for you to add classes, which you can then style with CSS. You can use a case (switch in most other languages) statement:

def format_clinical_text(txt)
    cls = ''

    case(txt)
    when /\Alabel/i
        txt.sub!(/label\s*/, '')
        cls = 'label'
    when /\Asurcharge/i
        cls = 'surcharge'
    when /\Adisp/i
        cls = 'disp'
    end

    return "<p class=\"#{cls}\">#{ERB::Util.h(txt)}</p>".html_safe
end

Then this line:

<p><%= clinical.ClinicalText %></p>

Would become:

<%= format_clinical_text(clinical.ClinicalText) %>

And that’s it! Note that those regexes are case insensitive, but require the trigger word to be the very first thing in the input string (no spaces or nuthin); also, only the "label" case strips out the word it matches. That’s how I interpreted your question, but I could be wrong. Tweak as necessary.

Hope that helps!