Best way to add “current” class to nav in Rails 3

Question

I have some static pages in a navigation menu. I want to add a class like \"current\" to the item which is currently displaying.

The way I am doing so is to add tons

Answer 1

The way I've done it is to add a helper function in the application_helper

def current_class?(test_path)
  return 'current' if request.request_uri == test_path
  ''
end

Then in the nav,

<%= link_to 'Home', root_path, :class => current_class?(root_path) %>

This tests the link path against the current page uri and returns either your current class or an empty string.

I've not tested this thoroughly and I'm very new to RoR (moving over after a decade with PHP) so if this has a major flaw I'd love to hear it.

At least this way you only need 1 helper function and a simple call in each link.