What approach do you take for embedding links in flash messages?

Question

The ability to have flash messages (notice, error, warning, etc) with embedded links is nice from a user interaction standpoint. However, embedding an anchor tag inside a f

Answer 1

Glenn Gillen has an approach that he calls Useful Flash Messages in Rails.

I modified his code snippets to be a little more idiomatic (for me at least).

The controller fills the flash like this:

flash[:notice]      = "Your profile was updated. %s"
flash[:notice_item] = ["Edit again?", edit_profile_path(@profile)]

You then might have helpers that look something like this:

def render_flash_messages(*keys)
  messages = keys.collect do |key|
    content_tag(:p, flash_message_with_item(key), :class => "flash #{key}") if flash[key]
  end.join
  content_tag(:div, messages, :id => "flash_messages") unless messages.blank?
end

def flash_message_with_item(key)
  item = flash["#{key}_item".to_sym]
  substitution = item.is_a?(Array) ? link_to(*item) : item
  flash[key] % substitution
end

The view looks simply like this:

<%= render_flash_messages(:error, :notice, :warning) %>

The view (via the flash_message_with_item helper) is responsible for creating the anchor tag, but the controller manages what goes into the flash message including an optional resource for further action.