merb-helpers
A plugin for the Merb Web framework that provides different view helpers.
To use this plugin in merb in your app
edit: ./Gemfile
add the li: gem “merb-helpers”
run: gem bundle
# TODO: describe date_time_helpers, form_helpers, tag_helpers
form_helpers
delete_button. If you want to delete an object, you should call the delete method on the object's controller.
You should not use a simple link to your action, instead you should make a DELETE request. To help you doing that, you can use the delete_button method as follows:
<%= delete_button(@comment) %>
The delete_button helper has many options, first thing, you can pass an object or an url:
<%= delete_button(url(:comment, @comment)) %>
This helper creates a form with a submit button. You can pass many arguments to the delete_button helper. The first thing you might want to do is to change the default button text.
<%= delete_button(@comment), "Remove this comment by #{@comment.author.name}" %>
You can also pass the usual helper params to specify a class to use for instance:
<%= delete_button(@comment, nil, :class => 'custom-class') %>
See usage in specs: spec/fixture/app/views/delete_button_specs
numeric helpers
Numeric helpers extend numeric instances, in lay terms: numbers.
minutes_to_hours converts a numeric value representing minutes into a string representing an hour value
315.minutes_to_hours # => "05:15"
two_digits formats a number into a two digit string. Basically it prepends an integer to a 2 digits string.
3.two_digits # => "03"
with_delimiter, this method formats a number with grouped thousands
12345678.with_delimiter # => "12,345,678"
with_precison, this method formats a number with a level of precision
111.2345.with_precision # => "111.235"
+to_currency, this method formats a number into a currency value using a delimited and a set precision
1234567890.506.to_currency # => "$1,234,567,890.51"
(For usage example look at spec/numeric_exlib.rb)
Overwriting the default formating options:
One can overwrite the default settings by passing the name or of the format used and a hash representing the settings to overwrite.
Each method mentioned above has some format settings you can overwrite:
with_delimiter
:delimiter - Overwrites the thousands delimiter.
:separator - Overwrites the separator between the units.
with_precision
:precision - Overwrites the level of precision
:separator - Overwrites the separator between the units
:delimiter - Overwrites the thousands delimiter
with_currency
:precision - Sets the level of precision
:unit - Sets the denomination of the currency
:format - Sets the format of the output string (defaults to “%u%n”). The field types are:
%u The currency unit
%n The number
Usage example:
1234567890.506.to_currency(:default, :unit => '£') # => "£1,234,567,890.51"
merb_helpers comes with a very limited set of formats you can use, here is an example:
1234567890.50.to_currency(:uk) # => "£1,234,567,890.50"
Formats are just a hash of settings used by the plugin, here is the default format:
:us => { :number => { :precision => 3, :delimiter => ',', :separator => '.' }, :currency => { :unit => '$', :format => '%u%n', :precision => 2 } }
If you wish to add a new format you can easily do that as follows:
custom_format_to_add = { :custom_name => { :number => { :precision => 3, :delimiter => ',', :separator => '.' }, :currency => { :unit => 'Merbollars', :format => '%n %u', :precision => 2 } } } Numeric::Transformer.add_format(custom_format_to_add)
You can then call the format like that:
1234567890.to_currency(:custom_name) # => "1,234,567,890.00 Merbollars"
After adding a custom format, you can set it as the default format:
Numeric::Transformer.change_default_format(:custom_name)
You can set this things up in your before/after app load block in the config/init.rb file.
Formating a Date or Time instance
Usage examples: spec/merb_helpers_date_time_spec.rb
Time.now.formatted(:db) # => "2008-09-21 02:07:31" Time.now.formatted(:long) # => "September 21, 2008 02:08"
You can also add your own format:
Date.add_format(:matt, "%H:%M:%S %Y-%m-%d")
And use is as a default format:
Time.now.formatted(:matt) # => "02:09:18 2008-09-21"
Representation of time difference
Usage examples: spec/merb_helpers_date_time_spec.rb
Relative time:
Let’s imagine that we are the June 1st 2007 at 11am UTC
relative_date(Time.now.utc) # => "today" relative_date(1.day.ago.utc) # => 'yesterday' relative_date(1.day.from_now.utc) # => 'tomorrow' relative_date(Time.utc(2005, 11, 15)) # => 'Nov 15th, 2005' (date with the year since it's not this year) relative_date(Time.utc(2007, 11, 15)) # => 'Nov 15th' (date without the year this the passed date is this year)
Generated with the Darkfish Rdoc Generator 2.