Question

I’ve got this list of objects out from my HalfLink model, like:

        @itemhl = HalfLink.find_all_by_item_id(@item, :include => :other_item)

id | item_id | other_item_id | other_item_category_id
1  | 1       | 2             | 1
2  | 1       | 3             | 4
3  | 1       | 4             | 3
4  | 1       | 6             | 1
5  | 1       | 8             | 3
6  | 1       | 7             | 4

and I want to convert it to display in my view as:

Name of category 1

Name of other_item 1

Name of other_item 6

Name of category 3

Name of other_item 4

Name of other_item 8

name of category 4

Name of other_item 3

Name of other_item 7

It only shows categories that are present, and groups by unique categories

I know the normal way is to link the ActiveRecord such that i can do Category.other_items but due to other issues, this isn’t very practical at the moment.

Is there any other way of setting this up? Should I build an array?

Some other lines i have are:

    @item_categories = @itemhl.map{|c| c.other_item.category.name }.uniq

Answer 1

You already have the code to retrieve items you want:

@itemhl = HalfLink.find_all_by_item_id(@item, :include => :other_item)

Now to convert it into more presentable form, you can do something like this:

@items_grouped_by_categories = @itemhl.group_by {|itemhl| itemhl.other_item.category.name}
# now you have a @items_grouped_by_categories, which resembeles this
# {
#    category1_name => [itemhl1, itemhl4],
#    category3_name => [itemhl3, itemhl5],
#    .....
# }

@items_grouped_by_categories.each do |category_name, itemhls|
   # output the category_name

   itemhls.each do |itemhl|
     other_time = itemhl.other_item
     # output the other item
   end
end