Sorting objects Rails

Question

I'm trying to sort some items that I am receiving from my database. Currently, I have a series of objects that get returned from my Tool model. Right now, I am retrieving some tools from my database, by using the following code (in my toolkit_controller):

 def index 
 @tools = Tool.order('name ASC').all
 end

This seems to be working fine and as intended. When I do this, I get the following result set (omitted some of the extra results for clarity).

 [#<Tool id: 1, name: "Hammer", description: "A basic hammer", 
 created_at: "2013-07-07 16:46:13",
 updated_at: "2013-07-07 16:46:15">, 
 #<Tool id: 2, name: "Mallet", description: "A fancy 
 mallet", created_at: "2013-07-07 16:46:13", updated_at: "2013-07-07 16:46:15">, 
 #<Tool id: 3, name: "Screwdriver", description: "A screwdriver", 
 created_at: "2013-07-07 16:46:13", updated_at: 
 "2013-07-07 16:46:15">, 
 #<Tool id: 4, name: "Torch", description: "A cheap torch", created_at: 
 "2013-07-07 16:46:13", updated_at: "2013-07-07 16:46:15">, ....]

What I'm struggling with right now is how to display my tools in a vertical fashion (rather than horizontal) on my erb page. To help paint a clear picture of the sort order I want, please take a look at this post: Ruby on Rails change array display order.

My display code is as follows:

<%= @count = 0 %>

<div>
    <% @tools.each do |t| %>
        <% @count = @count+1 %>

            <div class="individualTool">
                <%= t.name %> <%= @count %>
            </div>

       <% if @count == 4 %>

           <% @count = 0 %>
       </div>

       <div class="row-fluid">

       <% end %>

   <% end %>

As you can see, the above code works fine to display the tools by name from left-to-right (e.g. Hammer, Mallet, Screwdriver, Torch), but my goal here is to display them from top-to-bottom, in an order as seen here: Ruby on Rails change array display order.

In the post that I linked, someone suggested using .each_slice(3).to_a.transpose.flatten (to try and correct the sort order), but when I tried that on the @tools that were being returned, I received an error message stating that the element size differs.

Any ideas on how I can accomplish this would be great!

Thanks in advance.

I'm not sure I fully understand the question, but isn't this more of a CSS matter than a programmatic one? If its only a matter of how its shown. — Saifis
– Saifis, Commented Jul 7, 2013 at 23:12
I'd like to try and fix the order of my tools programatically if that's possible. If I could correct the order in which they exist [#Tools ... ], then I think my problem would resolve itself and the code would work. — meoww-
– meoww-, Commented Jul 7, 2013 at 23:17
Definitely a display issue to resolve with CSS. Don't put display logic into your controller!!! — user684934
– user684934, Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 0:09

meoww- · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-08 00:48:11Z

All, thank you for the input. I guess I'm still a bit confused as to why this wouldn't be considered a ruby sorting problem of which we could solve. After doing a bit more research on my own, I figured out how to solve the problem. The solution works as follows:

In my index method of the toolkit_controller, I have the following:

def index
@tools = Tool.order('name ASC').all
aAllTools = []

for i in @tools
  aHashedTool = {}
  aHashedTool["name"] = i.name
  aHashedTool["description"] = i.description
  aAllTools << aHashedTool
end


@outcome = aAllTools.each_slice(4).to_a.transpose.flatten  # Corrects the order. 
logger.debug "#{@outcome}"  # Verified. Order is now correct.

 end

By using the code above I was able to simply loop over the values like I had been doing in my question and everything seems to work. If there is a more optimal solution (or perhaps I should post a CSS question as well), then I would be happy to entertain it. Thanks again and I do appreciate your replies.

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