Loop & output content_tags within content_tag in helper

Question

I'm trying a helper method that will output a list of items, to be called like so:

foo_list( ['item_one', link_to( 'item_two', '#' ) ... ] )

I have written the helper like so after reading Using helpers in rails 3 to output html:

def foo_list items
    content_tag :ul do
        items.collect {|item| content_tag(:li, item)}
    end
end

However I just get an empty UL in that case, if I do this as a test:

def foo_list items
    content_tag :ul do
        content_tag(:li, 'foo')
    end
end

I get the UL & LI as expected.

I've tried swapping it around a bit doing:

def foo_list items
    contents = items.map {|item| content_tag(:li, item)}
    content_tag( :ul, contents )
end

In that case I get the whole list but the LI tags are html escaped (even though the strings are HTML safe). Doing content_tag(:ul, contents.join("\n").html_safe ) works but it feels wrong to me and I feel content_tag should work in block mode with a collection somehow.

Answer 1

Try this:

def foo_list items
  content_tag :ul do
      items.collect {|item| concat(content_tag(:li, item))}
  end
end