What is the best way to return multiple tags from a Rails Helper?

Question

I want to create a hidden field and create a link in one helper and then output both to my erb.

<%= my_cool_helper "something", form %>

Should out put the results of

link_to "something", a_path
form.hidden_field "something".tableize, :value => "something"

What would the definition of the helper look like? The details of what link_to and the form.hidden_field don't really matter. What matters is, how do I return the output from two different calls.

Answer 1

There are several ways to do this.

Remember that the existing rails helpers like link_to, etc, just output strings. You can concatenate the strings together and return that (which is what I do most of the time, if things are simple).

EG:

link_to( "something", something_path ) +  #NOTE THE PLUS FOR STRING CONCAT
  form.hidden_field('something'.tableize, :value=>'something')

If you're doing things which are more complicated, you could just put that code in a partial, and have your helper call render :partial.

If you're doing more complicated stuff than even that, then you may want to look at errtheblog's block_to_partial helper, which is pretty cool

Answer 2

So far the best I have come up with is:

def my_cool_helper(name, form)
  out = capture { link_to name, a_path }
  out << capture { form.hidden_field name.tableize, value => 'something' }
end

Is there a better way?

Answer 3

Using safe_join.

I typically prefer just concatenating with +, as shown in Orion Edwards's Answer, but here's another option I recently discovered.

safe_join( [
  link_to( "something", something_path ),
  form.hidden_field( "something".tableize, value: "something" )
] )

It has the advantage of explicitly listing all of the elements and the joining of those elements.

I find that with long elements, the + symbol can get lost at the end of the line. Additionally, if you're concatenating more than a few elements, I find listing them in an Array like this to be more obvious to the next reader.