Easy And/Or in Ruby on Rails

Christopher Wojno — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:05:00 -0700

This missing feature of rails has really bugged me, but it’s so useful.

If you have a list of words such as: apples, oranges, and bananas as an array:

>> list = ['apples','oranges','bananas']
=> ["apples", "oranges", "bananas"]

You’d like to be able to have a variable length list and still have it look correct in the view. So a smaller list:

>> list = ['oranges','bananas']
=> ["oranges", "bananas"]

Should look like: “oranges and bananas”.

>> list = ['apples','oranges','bananas']
=> ["apples", "oranges", "bananas"]
>> and_or_list 'and', list
=> "apples, oranges, and bananas" 
>> list.pop
=> "bananas" 
>> and_or_list 'and', list
=> "apples and oranges" 
>> list.pop
=> "oranges" 
>> and_or_list 'and', list
=> "apples"

The following block of code will do just that:

  def and_or_list( andor, list )
    list = list.dup
    comma = (list.size > 2 ? ',' : '')
    list2 = list.pop if list.size > 1
    s = list.join(', ')
    s << comma+' '+andor+' ' + list2 if list2
    s
  end

Vioa!

Instant and easy listing of various things, in English. Your users will never know it’s generated.

I’ve wrapped it up in a neat little plug-in for you. Just install it in your vendor/plugins directory. It will automatically be available in your views.

AndOrList Module

Wojno: Tag and

Easy And/Or in Ruby on Rails