Question

I have this Haml view:

!!! strict
 %html{:xmlns => "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"}
   %head
     %meta{:content => "text/html; charset=utf-8", "http-equiv" => "Content-Type"}
     %title
       Lighty | #{@page_title || "Home"}
   %body
     #popup Login here
     #fade
     #wrapper
       #container
         #header
           %a#logo{:href => "/"}
         #menu
           %ul#main
             %li#lighty
               %a{:href => "/"} Lighty
                 %ul
                    %li
                       %a Link here
             %li#community
               %a{:href => "/community"} Community
        #content

And I would like to add an if on line #16 to check if it is the currently visited page and add the class “active” to the li if it returns true.

How do I write that if statement there and is there any easier way to do this?

My plan now is to use a variable like @current_page and test if @current_page == "community" and add a class if it returns true.

Am I thinking wrong? Is there any easier way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

I would highly suggest creating a helper method called visited_class or something similar since it should have access to the current controller/action. Then, you can write all of the code’s logic inside of the helper method. This keeps your views drastically cleaner.

You can place this in many places, but since I have so few helpers, I usually just drop it in ApplicationHelper:

def ApplicationHelper

  def visited_class(controller, action)
    if params[:controller] == controller && params[:action] == action
      return " active"
    else
      return ""
    end
  end

end

Then, in your view/HAML file, simply call visited_class and pass in the controller/action that you want to check. You might also be able to use a URL parameter and piece it together from the request.request_uri, but that might be a bit more tedious.