Ian Purton’s Notes

Helper to Display Rails Flash Messages

PublishedDecember 13th, 2006
AuthorIan Purton
CategoriesWebmastering, rails

A simple code snippet for displaying your flash[:warning] = “Warning Message” messages in rails.

Add the following to your application_helper.rb.

def flash_helper

    f_names = [:notice, :warning, :message]
    fl = ''

    for name in f_names
      if flash[name]
        fl = fl + "<div class=\"notice\">#{flash[name]}</div>"
      end
    flash[name] = nil;
  end
  return fl
end

To show all messages place this code in your view (rhtml).

<%= flash_helper %>

Also here’s some CSS to style the messages.

div.notice {
	margin-left: auto;
	margin-right: auto;
	text-align: center;
	width: 40%;
	border: 5px solid #ccc;
	margin-top: 50px;
	padding: 20px;
	font-weight: bold;
}

"Helper to Display Rails Flash Messages" was published on December 13th, 2006 and is listed in Webmastering, rails.

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Helper to Display Rails Flash Messages: 8 Comments

Mark

Thank You

Link | April 18th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Dallas

You really should not put xhtml code into your helpers. Keep your content, layout, functional code, and styles separate.

Link | May 31st, 2007 at 12:05 pm

S. Potter

I use a more terse version of what your code does:

  def render_flash_messages
    result = ''
    for type in [:notice, :warning, :message]
      message = flash[type]
      # commented out content_tag, while cleaner is very inefficient
      #content_tag('div', message, :class => type) if message
      # using string inline method...
      result #{message}"
    end
    result
  end

A few things should be noted:
flash_helper and render_flash_messages are roughly equivalent performance wiseflash_helper has a defect in it. Line 8 should read: fl = fl + â€#{flash[name]}â€

Link | July 2nd, 2007 at 9:36 pm

S. Potter
Formatting of previous comment (or lackthereof) may cause misunderstanding. Code should read:
```
def render_flash_messages
  result = ''
  for type in [:notice, :warning, :message]
    message = flash[type]
    result #{message}â€
  end
  result
end
```
I should also note that content_tag is quite slow, which is why I used the inline string to generate HTML. If a partial was used instead (for the MVC purist, which I am usually) that would have incurred an even higher performance hit, which in most of my applications isn’t worth the extra purity of the code.

Link | July 2nd, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Adam Salter

here’s another version of the above, even more terse…

def flash_helper
[:notice, :warning, :message].map { |f| content_tag(:div, flash[f], :class => type) if flash[f] }
end

Link | December 10th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Adam Salter

woops, I mean

def flash_helper
[:notice, :warning, :message].map { |f| content_tag(:div, flash[f], :class => f) if flash[f] }
end

Link | December 10th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Jarrod

@Dallas

I disagree… I think having a little markup in your helpers is perfectly acceptable. They are “help” for your presentation after all. I think the main mistake people make is using helpers for things that should go into a partial.

Link | March 13th, 2008 at 9:09 am
spannarissuro

OK, let me repeat that… Do you have a sense of wonder about my comfortable doubt A JOKE! ) What is three feet long? A yard.

Link | October 28th, 2008 at 5:05 pm