Question

I want to create a hidden field and create a link in one helper and then output both to my erb.

<%= my_cool_helper 'something', form %> 

Should out put the results of

link_to 'something', a_path form.hidden_field 'something'.tableize, :value => 'something' 

What would the definition of the helper look like? The details of what link_to and the form.hidden_field don’t really matter. What matters is, how do I return the output from two different calls.

Answer 1

There are several ways to do this.

Remember that the existing rails helpers like link_to, etc, just output strings. You can concatenate the strings together and return that (which is what I do most of the time, if things are simple).

EG:

link_to( 'something', something_path ) +  #NOTE THE PLUS FOR STRING CONCAT   form.hidden_field('something'.tableize, :value=>'something') 

If you’re doing things which are more complicated, you could just put that code in a partial, and have your helper call render :partial.

If you’re doing more complicated stuff than even that, then you may want to look at errtheblog’s block_to_partial helper, which is pretty cool