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Ruby

Jonathan Fernandes
PLUS
Jonathan Fernandes
Courses Plus Student 22,784 Points
Posted by Jonathan Fernandes
Jonathan Fernandes
Courses Plus Student 22,784 Points

Rails classes with helper

I need some help adding bootstraps "active" class to my links in my application controller. I can't figure out why it isn't working or I don't know a simpler way of getting this done.

Here is the embedded html:

<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
  <li class="nav-item">
    <%= link_to "Home", '#', :class => active_page(:webpageTitle, "Home") %>
  </li>
  <li class="nav-item">
    <%= link_to "About", '#', :class => active_page(:webpageTitle, "About") %>
  </li>
</ul>

here is my helper function in the application_helper.rb file:

# code for active page class
   def active_page(title, current_link)
      if title == current_link
         return "nav-link active"
      else
         return "nav-link"
      end
   end

And each of my pages have this provide function to supply one of the arguments:

<% provide(:webpageTitle, "Home") %>

<h1>Hello Treehouse!</h1>

Any thought on why I keep getting the output of just "nav-link" as a class when I am on the active page?

2 Answers

Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points
Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points

Jonathan,

Symbols are immutable, meaning their value remains constant during the entirety of the program. So you really shouldn't be setting temporary attributes, like a page title in my opinion.

See if setting your title as an instance variable (@title) impacts how your method works.

Jonathan Fernandes
Jonathan Fernandes
Courses Plus Student 22,784 Points
Jonathan Fernandes
Jonathan Fernandes
Courses Plus Student 22,784 Points

I did and it not only didn't work, it made my other helper stop working too, so I changed it back.

My other helper is to display the title with a provide symbol:

def full_webpage_title(webpage_title = '')
      starting_title = "Team Boxfort"
      if webpage_title.empty?
         "#{starting_title} | A Playground for Creativity"
      else
         "#{starting_title} | #{webpage_title}"
      end
   end

which I yield in my application controller like so:

<title><%= full_webpage_title(yield(:webpageTitle)) %></title>

So yeah, no luck with that... :(

Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points
Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points

Try outputting the value of :webpageTitle on the page just to see what it's storing the value as for comparison.

Jonathan Fernandes
PLUS
Jonathan Fernandes
Courses Plus Student 22,784 Points
Jonathan Fernandes
Jonathan Fernandes
Courses Plus Student 22,784 Points

Okay, so I figured it out and I feel dumb as heck. I didn't create an instance of the webpageTitle variable on the application controller. Once I did, I was golden. So in the application controller I put this in under the meta tags:

<% current_page = yield(:webpageTitle) %>

and did this for my links:

<%= link_to "Home", root_path, :class => active_page(current_page, "Home") %>

Works like a charm!

Thanks for the help!

Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points
Tim Knight
Tim Knight
28,888 Points

Excellent! Glad to hear you got it working.