Question

I would like the @comment1 to change to @comment2 by using the i in the 1..5 loop. I have the following code that is pretty repetitive. I am hoping to dry it up.

Hi,I am using acts_as_commentable_with_threading. I am basically looping through all comments and checking to see if that comment has children. If so, print out the children while checking to see if those children have children. So I plan on going a few levels deep, hence the @comment1,2,3, etc…How can I DRY this? Recursion some how? If not, I could maybe go a few levels deep and end the comment indentation at @comment5 for example.

EDIT!

Thank you Samiron!

Here is the updated helper function…

    def show_comments_with_children(comments)
    
     comments.each do |comment|
         
         yield comment
         if comment.children.any?
           concat <<-EOF.html_safe
                <div class="span7 offset1-1 pcomment">
           EOF
            show_comments_with_children(comment.children) {                 |x| yield  x } #Dont worry, this will not run another query :)
               concat <<-EOF.html_safe
                    </div>
               EOF
         end   
     end
  end

---

<div class="span7 offset1-1 pcomment">
<% @comment1 = comment.children%>
<% for comment in @comment1 %>
 <%= render "comment_replies", :comment => comment %>
            
<div class="span7 offset1-1 pcomment">
<% @comment2 = comment.children%>
<% for comment in @comment2 %>
<%= render "comment_replies", :comment => comment %>

<div class="span7 offset1-1 pcomment">
<% @comment3 = comment.children%>
<% for comment in @comment3 %>
<%= render "comment_replies", :comment => comment %>

                <% end %>
            </div>

….

<%(1..5).each do |i| %>
  <% @comment1 = comment.children%>
  <% for comment in @comment1 %>
    <%= render "comment_replies", :comment => comment %>
  <% end %>
<% end %>

Answer 1

Probably you are looking for instance_variable_set.

# Following snippet is not TESTED. It is here to just demonstrate "instance_variable_set"
<%(1..5).each do |i| %>
  <% instance_variable_set("@comment#{i}", comment.children) %>
  <% for comment in instance_variable_get("@comment#{i}") %>
    <%= render "comment_replies", :comment => comment %>
  <% end %>
<% end %>

But definitely this is not a recommendable approach. You can share your controller code and what you want to achieve in your view. There must be some way to make it properly DRY. In your post you are always getting comment.children. is it really?

---

Actual Solution:

Your view code will be like this

#0th level is the top level
<% show_comments_with_children(@comments, 0) do |comment, level|%>
   <!-- #Use level to differ the design for different depth-->
   <%= render "comment_replies", :comment => comment %>
<%end%>

and add this helper function show_comments_with_children in your helper function. Which will be.

def show_comments_with_children(comments, level)
   comments.each do |comment|
       yield comment, level
       if comment.children.any?
           show_comments_with_children(comment.children, level+1) {|x, l| yield x, l} #Dont worry, this will not run another query :)
       end
   end
end