How to use Rails helpers in coffeescript js

Question

I don't quite understand how helpers work in the view / controllers. I have never used them.

My specific question is: almost all of my views implement AJAX. In most of my controllers, the update.js.coffee and create.js.coffee have some form of the following code:

jQuery ->
  <% if @product.errors.any? %>
  error_info = '<%= j(render :partial => "shared/errors", :locals => { :record => @product }) %>'
  popup error_info

  <% else %>
.
.
.

where popup is a javascript function to display some element.

Is there a way to abstract this into a helper? What is the best way to do this? this code is almost exactly the same in every case, except the 2 uses of @product would of course be different depending on the model in question.

If this isn't what helpers are used for, then 1) what are they used for? and 2) what should I be using instead?

Edit: BONUS QUESTION: actually, many of my new, create, edit, and update functions are similar across models. How do you DRY this up? or do you just not worry about it?

Jay Stramel · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-15 02:42:43Z

3

The first step is to change the extension of your file to .js.coffee.erb. This let's the asset pipeline know that you want the file to be interpreted with ERB.

The second, optional step is to add custom helpers to Sprokets so that you can call your own methods from your Coffee script files*. Simply create a new helper module and then register it in an initializer:

Sprockets::Context.send :include, CoffeeHelper

*: The assets will not be able to access all the helpers you are used to using because the ERB is run when the assets are compiled rather than as part of an HTTP request. The normal controller/helper setup is not present.

answered Dec 15, 2013 at 2:42

Jay Stramel

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Comments

ericraio · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-11 04:38:29Z

0

If you want to refactor this code into a rails helper it would be done just like any other helper method, you have to have all the javascript code as a string and your rails helpers will need to return a string.

Rails helpers are there to help refactor logic out of your views so that you can keep your code logic-less as possibly and it is there to allow repeated code to be more dry.

If you find that some code is being repeated across your models, you may also look into refactoring that code into a ruby module in the lib directory and include the module into your models.

answered Jul 11, 2012 at 4:38

ericraio

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1 Comment

Bryan Over a year ago

Thanks for the information. The string that the helper returns is the javascript, with the erb, right? Since it's coffee, does the returned string need newlines and double-spaced indents to work properly?

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