CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyhash
Sarah
Sarah

Reputation: 516

How can I either work with the ruby on rails flash hash manually, or create my own "custom" hash for error messages?

In my rails 3 project, I'm trying to create a consistent error/success message display dialog to go in the header of my page. I have it displaying flash messages when they are set from controllers, like this:

  <% if flash.length > 0 %>

      <% flash.each do |key, value| %>

           <% if key == "error" %>
                <div class="notice error"><%= value %></div>
           <% elsif key == "success" %>
                <div class="notice success"><%= value %></div>      
           <% else %>
               <div class="notice regular"><%= value %></div>
           <% end %>

      <% end %>

  <% end %>

But, I want to also be able to send custom messages to my dialog that come from link_to tags, for example:

<% if [certain variable is set] %>

    <% message = Hash.new %>
    <% message[type] = "specific message to be sent with this link" %>
    <%= link_to [Link option one] %>

<% else %>

    <%= link_to [Link option two] %>

<% end %>

where "type" is either "error", "success", or something else.

when I try to accomplish this by manually putting the message in the flash hash like this:

 <% flash[:error] = "specific message to be sent with this link" %>
 <%= link to [Link option one] %>

...the message shows up when the user clicks the link, but isn't removed after the user clicks other links. The message remains in the flash hash despite my attempts to remove it manually. The message shows up in the header no matter what page the user goes to, even if the flash hash doesn't have anything new added to it.

When I try the code with the "message" hash above, by testing for "message" in my header and sending it from wherever I want, the hash called "message" isn't set on all pages (only the page I send it to). This understandably results in the error of

     undefined local variable or method 'message'

whenever 'message' is not specifically set in the page. I've tried things like

      <% if message %>
           <%# show error message %>
      <% end %>

and

 <% if !message.nil? %>
      etc

but I still get the undefined error.

Is there a way I can either

a) manually clear a specific hash value after sending it manually,

b) stop the "undefined variable" error from occurring when 'message' is undefined,

or

c) solve this problem in another way?

Thanks so much!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1436

Answers (2)

cam
cam

Reputation: 14222

The message is always showing up because you are always setting the flash[:error] when "certain variable is set." The flash in this case has no relationship with the link_to whatsoever. You should be setting flash[:error] in your controller for whatever action that link_to is pointing to.

An abundance of logic in your view (as seen above) is a code smell. You should avoid this whenever possible (in this case by putting the flash logic in your controller).

Upvotes: 1

Pan Thomakos
Pan Thomakos

Reputation: 34350

Here are some things you can do:

  1. Manually remove flash messages with flash.delete(:error). This will result in flash[:error] being deleted, and the return value of this function is the actual value of flash[:error], so you can use it to replace <%= value %> for example, <%= flash.delete(key) %>.
  2. Check if your message variable is defined using defined?(message). This should avoid the undefined errors.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions