Alternating Colors in Ruby/Rails

For displaying lists it is often useful to show the rows of the list in alternating colors. Ruby on Rails makes this really easy.

<head> <style> .even { background: #99ccff; } .odd { background: #cccccc; } </style> </head>

Add the class attribute that calls the cycle method to the HTML element that you use to describe the row, e.g., DIV or table row TR, …, for example:
<% for track in @tracks %> <div class="<%= cycle('even','odd') %>" > <h3> 'show', :id => track %></h3> </div> <% end %>

That is it. Kudos to Ruby on Rails creators for making this so simple!

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This entry was posted on May 31, 2007 at 2:12 am and is filed under Programming, Ruby on Rails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tobias Hoellrich Says:
May 31, 2007 at 3:39 pm | Reply
Where does the “cycle” come from? Is that a Rails-builtin?
sj Says:
June 1, 2007 at 3:27 am | Reply
Rails defines a framework in terms of APIs. It includes a template engine (similar to Java JSP), e.g. The APIs includes a number of very useful utility classes. One of them is called ActionView::Helpers::TextHelper and it includes a method called cycle.
Josh Says:
May 11, 2008 at 10:15 am | Reply
perfect! i was using my own helper, no sense reinventing the wheel. -thanks!