labelize

= labelize

This very very simple gem is handy for several things:

• Simplify creating select tags
• Easily outputs a model as a string
• Ads to_sentence functionality to a model
• Allows searching items by the defined label without changing controllers

First, define the label of your model (it must be a String column):

class Country label :name end

Now you are free of "collects" or "collection_select". Look:

• form_for(@state) do |f| = f.select :country_id

You can do that:

irb> country = Country.create :name => 'Brazil' irb> puts country Brazil => nil

And that:

irb> Country.to_sentence => "Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina"

At last, but not the least, you can find items by name automatically:

irb> Country.find('Brazil') => #<Country id: 72, name: "Brazil", ...>

If you have a specific label for searching (like a permalink column), you can set it as a second parameter:

class Country label :name, :permalink end

irb> Country.find('south-corea') => #<Country id: 31, name: "South Corea", :permalink => 'south-corea' ...>

It works out-of-the-box with inherited_resources and i think it can be used with has_permalink also.

== Install

Just add this to your Gemfile (assuming your source is RubyForge)

gem 'labelize', '0.1.3'

And then run

bundle install

== Ideas

This gem is still beta, so please, if you have any thought on were the "labels" idea can also be usefull please feel free to share. My twitter is @joaomilho.

== Rails version

Labelize is only tested with Rails 3.0.0.beta4. Upgrade baby!

== Note on Patches/Pull Requests

• Fork the project.
• Make your feature addition or bug fix.
• Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

== Copyright

Copyright (c) 2010 Juan Maiz. See LICENSE for details.