loop problems.

[pjleonhardt]

Alright, I'm still green with ruby, so excuse my ignorance..
I've got a number of columns in a user table that I want to loop through..

I'm doing something like:

 <%
    cols = %w(phone_number aim_sn msn_sn)
    cols.each do |c|
      if !empty?(@user.c)
 %>
    <span><%= @user.c %></span>
 <%
      end
    end
  %>

I'm getting an error says "undefined method `c'"

how do I get it so it uses c dynamically, instead of as the character c??
Or if you think my code is absolutely silly, let me know how i _should_ be doing it..

Thanks

[IAIHMB]

I believe all of an ActiveRecord object's attributes are stored in an attributes hash, so the following should work:

<% for attribute in @user.attributes %>
  <% unless attribute.empty? %>
    <span><%= attribute %></span>
  <% end %>
<% end %>

[pjleonhardt]

that works for displaying all the fields, but I'm only trying to show the specific ones listed. is there a way to modify that?

[redemption]

Try this:

<%
  cols = [:phone_number, :aim_sn, :msn_sn]
  cols.each do |c|
    value = @user.send c
    if !empty?(value)
%>
  <span><%= value %></span>
<%
    end
  end
%>

I just typed it out so there may be some errors. In any case, the send method is probably what you want here.

[pjleonhardt]

Worked like a charm, thank you.