Question

I’m displaying records in a grid format from an ActiveRecord list using each_slice. What I want to do is randomly insert items into this grid.

My code currently looks something like:

<%=things.each_slice(3) do |row|%>
  <div class="row">
    <%row.each do |listing|%>
        <%=show_cell(listing)%>
    <%end%>
  </div>
<%end%>

Which produces a grid like so:

+----+----+----+
|cell|cell|cell| 
+----+----+----+
|cell|cell|cell| 
+----+----+----+
|cell|cell|cell| 
+----+----+----+

What I want to do is have something like

+----+----+----+
|cell|cell|cell| 
+----+----+----+
|cell|xxxx|cell| 
+----+----+----+
|cell|cell|xxxx| 
+----+----+----+

Where the cells come from the things collection of records, and the xxxx’s are randomly inserted (10% chance)

Is there a “ruby” way of doing this without getting rid of the slicing method, and manually keeping a count of when to create new rows?

Answer 1

Make a new array of mixed Things and Xxxs:

mixed_stuff = things.to_a.collect {|t| rand > 0.9 ? t : [t, xxx] }.flatten

Then you can do:

<%=mixed_stuff.each_slice(3) do |row|%> etc…

Then in the show_cell(listing) method you can do if listing.is_a?(Thing)... else listing.is_a?(Xxx)...