Question

My view has this:

%tr
   %th =link_to 'Name', :sort =>'name', :id => 'name_header'

My Controller method for the view has this:

@students = Student.order(params[:sort]).all

I am trying to sort by clicking on the column header.
Similarly, I tried params[:id] instead of params[:sort] but it failed too.

Answer 1

Make sure that the Student has the column name. This will find all the students like find_all does ordered by the value that has key sort in params. We expect to be "name".

@students = Student.find(:all, :order => 'name') if params[:sort]=='name'

And for your .haml, assign the id for the anchor tag;

%tr
  %th= link_to "Name", params.merge(:sort => 'name'), :id => 'name_header'

Or, assign the id to the table header.

%tr
  %th{:id => 'name_header'}= link_to "Name", params.merge(:sort => 'name')

With .merge() you keep the old parameters and, if the link is clicked, you add the GET parameter sort. As I didn’t realize if the id is for the table header of the link I put the two solutions! As an EXAMPLE you can clone this app and see in /movies.