Rails Calendar Generation Method

Question

I have this helper method that generates an HTML calendar based on the current day:

module PageHelper
 def calendar(date)
 cal = "<table class='table-condensed table-bordered table-striped'><thead><tr>"
 days = %w(Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat)
 days.each do |day|
 cal += "<th>#{day}</th>"
 end
 cal+= '</thead></tr><tbody><tr>'
 #end of table head
 first_day = date.at_beginning_of_month.strftime('%w').to_i
 last_day = date.at_end_of_month.strftime('%d').to_i
 last_day_week = date.at_end_of_month.strftime('%w').to_i
 current_day = date.strftime("%d").to_i
 prev_month_day = (date - 1.month).at_end_of_month.strftime('%d').to_i
 # print first row
 first_day.times do |day|
 num = prev_month_day - first_day + day + 1
 cal += "<td class='text-muted small'>#{num}</td>"
 end
 (7-first_day).times do |day|
 if day == current_day -1
 cal += "<td class='btn-primary'><strong>#{day+1}</strong></td>"
 else
 cal += "<td>#{day+1}</td>"
 end
 end
 # print remaining rows
 cal += '<tr>'
 (7-first_day).upto(last_day-1).each_slice(7) do |slice|
 cal += '<tr>'
 slice.each do |day|
 if day == current_day -1
 cal += "<td class='btn-primary'><strong>#{day+1}</strong></day>"
 else
 cal += "<td>#{day+1}</td>"
 end
 end
 cal += '</tr>' unless slice.last == last_day -1
 end
 # get remaining number of cells
 rem_cells = 6 - last_day_week
 if rem_cells && rem_cells != 6
 rem_cells.times do |day|
 cal += "<td class='text-muted'>#{day+1}</td>"
 end
 end
 cal += '</tr></tbody></table><br/><br/>'
 end
end

The method is called like this:

<%= calendar(Date.today).html_safe %>

Here is an example calendar:

Calendar

However, I think that my code is not very DRY and the method is unnecessarily longer than what it should be.

Answer 1

I agree that it is too long. I find a good place to start is to try breaking it up into methods that are short and each do a single thing. While I'm doing this I usually see opportunities to make things DRY.

My code might look like:

content_tag(:table, ...) do 
 header_row + week_rows 
end
def week_rows
 num_rows = (first_day + last_day) % 7
 rows = num_rows.times.map { |i| week_row(i) }
 content_tag(:tbody) do rows.join('')
end

A couple of things I noticed:

• Instead of hard-coding html like "<table class='table-condensed table-bordered table-striped'><thead><tr>" use the Rails content_tag helper

• Instead of date.at_end_of_month.strftime('%w').to_i use the wday method. There is also a day method that you can use instead of %d.

• Have your method return a string that is already html_safe