This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Obie Fernandez. Original Post: the breadcrumbs example Feed Title: Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?) Feed URL: http://jroller.com/obie/feed/entries/rss Feed Description: Obie Fernandez talks about life as a technologist, mostly as ramblings about software development and consulting. Nowadays it's pretty much all about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Obie Fernandez Latest Posts From Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?)

My current project features breadcrumbs, a fairly common dynamic navigation feature which helps the user track where he is on the site.

Given the hierarchical nature of the data presented (cities, neighborhoods, scenes) and the way those models are set up as nested REST resources, I was able to code the implementation of the breadcrumbs feature in an easy to read and understand 5-line helper method.

module ApplicationHelper
  
  def breadcrumbs
    s =  [ link_to('Home', home_path) ]
    s << link_to(@city.name, city_path(@city)) if @city
    s << link_to(@neighborhood.name, neighborhood_path(@city, @neighborhood_path)) if @neighborhood
    s << link_to(@scene.name, scene_path(@city, @neighborhood, @scene)) if @scene
    s.join(' > ')
  end
  
end

I was particularly happy with the elegance of pushing the link elements of the breadcrumb trail onto a Ruby array and joining them with a > character on the last line.