A simple and Rubyish view helper for Rails 3. Keep your helpers and views Object-Oriented!

1. automatically mixes decorator module into corresponding model only when:
2. passing a model or collection of models or an instance of ActiveRecord::Relation from controllers to views
3. rendering partials with models (using :collection or :object or :locals explicitly or implicitly)
4. the decorator module runs in the model's context. So, you can directly call any attributes or methods in the decorator module
5. since decorators are considered as sort of helpers, you can also call any ActionView's helper methods such as content_tag or link_to

Rails 3.0.x, 3.1.x, 3.2.x, and 4.0 (edge)

ActiveRecord, ActiveResource, and any kind of ORMs that uses Ruby Objects as model objects

1. bundle 'active_decorator' gem
2. create a decorator module for each AR model. For example, a decorator for a model User should be named UserDecorator. You can use the generator for doing this ( % rails g decorator user )
3. Then it's all done. Without altering any single line of the existing code, the decorator modules will be automatically mixed into your models only in the view context.

# app/models/user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  # first_name:string last_name:string website:string
end

# app/decorators/user_decorator.rb
module UserDecorator
  def full_name
    "#{first_name} #{last_name}"
  end

  def link
    link_to full_name, website
  end
end

# app/controllers/users_controller.rb
class UsersController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @users = User.all
  end
end

# app/views/users/index.html.erb
<% @users.each do |user| %>
  <%= user.link %><br>
<% end %>

• Fork, fix, then send me a pull request.

Copyright (c) 2011 Akira Matsuda. See MIT-LICENSE for further details.