Question

I have this helper method that I can’t seem to clean up with content_tag in Rails 3.1

def site_address(site)
    html = '<address>'    
    html += site.address1 if site.address1.present?
    html += tag(:br) + site.address2 if site.address2.present?
    html += tag(:br) + site.city + ', ' if site.city.present?
    html += site.state.statecode if site.state.present?
    html += ' ' + site.zipcode if site.zipcode.present?
    html += '</address>'

    html.html_safe
end

If I try using content_tag(:address) do.... and then put the content in the block, it just escapes my <br /> tags.

Also notice there is a lot of if.present? logic because the table can have a bunch of null values.

Thanks

Answer 1

Have you considered moving this logic into a partial? Also, you should be using the new #presence method.

First, the method:

def site_address(site)
  address = [
    site.address1.presence,
    site.address2.presence
  ].compact

  location = ""
  location << site.city << ", " if site.city.present?
  location << site.state.statecode if site.state.present?
  location << site.zipcode if site.zipcode.present?

  render :partial => "shared/site_address",
         :locals => { :address_lines => address, :location => location }
end

Then, the partial:

<address>
  <% address_lines.each do |line| %>
    <%= line %><br>
  <% end %>
  <%= location %>
</address>

In general, using html_safe in a helper is a hint that you might be going overboard with HTML logic in your helper, and that it might a good idea to fall back on the template engine, which lets you more easily mix static and dynamic content with good default XSS-safe semantics.

Note: If address1, address2, etc. are actually nil, and not possibly an empty String (I suspect this is true about site.state, at least), you don’t need to use present at all. Just say if site.state and call it a day. The present and presence methods simply treat empty values as if they were nil for the purpose of conditionals.