Rails form helper to display email fields and their validation errors

Question

I have a repeated pattern throughout my app that looks like this:

<div class="form-group floating-label <%= f.object.errors[:to].any?? "has-error has-feedback" : "" %>">
 <% if f.object.errors[:to].any? %>
 <%= f.label f.object.errors[:to].join(", ") %>
 <% end %>
 <%= f.email_field :to, class: "form-control" %>
 <%= f.label :to %>
</div>

The only thing that changes is the attribute. Instead of the :to attribute, it might be something else. But everything else will remain the same.

I extracted it out into a helper method:

_form.html.erb

 <%= field_view "To", f.email_field(:to, class: "form-control") %>

form_helper.rb

 def field_view(label, *args, &block)
 # label = label.t internalization
 options = args.extract_options!
 field = args.first
 formatter = args.second
 data = capture(&block) if block_given?
 options[:class] = "form-group floating-label #{options[:class]}".strip
 element = formatter ? send(formatter, field) : field
 make_content label, element, options
 end
 def make_content(label, element, options)
 content_tag :div, options do
 element + content_tag(:label, label)
 end
 end

I do not want my form_helper to know anything about the field. Because sometimes it will be f.text_field :to, text_field_tag :to, f.select, etc. Too much change happening to make the form_helper aware of it.

What approach would you suggest in order to incorporate that error checking functionality which is shown in the first example?

Answer 1

I would try this (naming needs improvement):

*_helper.rb:

 def field_wrapper(errors, &block)
 css_classes = %w(form-group floating-label)
 css_classes << 'has-error has-feedback' if errors.any?
 content_tag :div, class: css_classes, &block
 end
 def error_label(form, errors)
 form.label errors.join(', ') if errors.any?
 end

*.html.erb:

 <%= field_wrapper f.object.errors[:to] do %>
 <%= error_label f, f.object.errors[:to] %>
 <%= f.email_field :to, class: "form-control" %>
 <%= f.label :to %>
 <% end %>