Practical Form Helpers¶ ↑

A collection of ActionView extensions to make building forms the way I want to build them easier and less repetitive.

Labeled form fields¶ ↑

My convention these days is to construct most form fields to look like this:

<p class="field">
  <label for="user_login">User name</label>

<input id=“user_login” name=“user_login” type=“text” size=“16” />

</p>

When 95% of my form fields look like this, this HTML can get repetitive. This plugin, therefore, allows me to generate the above HTML with just one line of code:

<%= labeled_text_field :user, :login, :label => "User name", :size => 16 %>

‘labeled_text_field` is a wrapper around FormHelper’s ‘text_field` method. All options except :label are simply passed through. The wrapper is provided via `method_missing`, and therefore works with any object field helper (such as `date_select` or `check_box`).

Adding additional details¶ ↑

Occasionally, I need to include some extra information, such as in-line help:

<div class="field">
  <label for="user_login">User name</label>

<p><input id=“user_login” name=“user_login” type=“text” /></p> <p class=“info”>Usernames should only include letters, numbers, the underscore (_) character or dashes (-).</p>

</div>

For these cases, each labeled_* method can take a block argument:

<% labeled_text_field :user, :login, :label => "User name" do %>
  <p class="info">Usernames should only include letters, numbers,

the underscore (_) character or dashes (-).</p>

<% end %>

Really special cases¶ ↑

But what about the small but thorny circumstances where the above structure is far too limiting? For cases where you want the basic .field > label structure, but need more control over how your form fields themselves are generated and laid out, there’s a separate method for generating just the wrapper and label:

<% field_with_label :user, :login do %>
<!-- Your code here -->
<% end %>

Which gives you:

<div class="field">
  <label for="user_login">Login</label>
  <!-- Your code here -->
</div>

What about form_for?¶ ↑

No problemo; all labeled_* methods work in form_for-generated forms as well:

<% form_for @user do |f| %>
  <%= f.labeled_text_field :login %>
  <p><%= submit_tag "Sign up" %></p>
<% end %>

TODO¶ ↑

Right now, the unless a block is given the field tag(s) are not wrapped in anything, which can be a problem with methods like date_helper which return multiple HTML elements. This, obviously, is not good eats, and will be addressed.

Credits¶ ↑

Author: David Demaree, Practical Creative & Code, Chicago, U.S.A.

Copyright © 2009 David Demaree, released under the MIT license