Question

Ok this may seem stupid and I have googled extensively using various different keywords and terms, attempted a lot of various different methods and tried to my very last breadth and cannot seem to figure out how to do this. All I want is stdout in a rails app without needing to break my block.

Currently, when I do a block of ruby code in my rails app and want to output the value I do the following

<% somearray do | item | %>
    <%= item %>
<% end %>

To me this is quite messy, I know coming from a PHP background it’s not how one should imagine how to code in rails but coming from many different environments I like my code to look nice to me. It’s very easy to encapsulate every single line with <% %> but I’d prefer my code to be my code and my mark up to be my mark up.

What I’d like, but which doesn’t work, is….

<%
    somearray do | item |
        whatever item #whatever being puts or similar
    end
%>

It’s solely for the aesthetics of the code and not for what it produces but for me, a very long time programmer, it means a lot and a lot of time saved when trying to see where and when code blocks begin and end.

Thanks in advance,

Jay (c0ld)

Answer 1

You can use concat. From the docs:

The preferred method of outputting text in your views is to use the <%= “text” %> eRuby syntax. …. If you absolutely must output text within a non-output code block (i.e., <% %>), you can use the concat method.

Examples

<%
    concat "hello"
    # is the equivalent of <%= "hello" %>

    if logged_in
      concat "Logged in!"
    else
      concat link_to('login', :action => login)
    end
    # will either display "Logged in!" or a login link
%>