Other people have mentioned method_missing and constructs similar to your array usage. It’s cool and eliminates a bunch of repetitive code, but I’m just not a fan of this sort of code architecture. As soon as one of the fields differ (password, size, style, etc..) you have to do more work to make a change than you would with the current construct.

Basically this construct is there with the assumption that something is going to change. So, I think it’s more maintainable this way…interesting how we have different takes on maintainability.

However, it’s just not mine anymore now is it? :)

If others express the same wants I don’t see why I couldn’t add a flag in to the generator to provide different templating formats.

I know it needs to be smarter than it is now and will be working on that in the near future.

Thanks again for the comments. They are very much appreciated :)

module AuthorsHelper
%w(first_name last_name).each do |field|
eval < <-DEF
def author_#{field}_value
if @action_name == “show”
h @author.#{field}
else
text_field_tag “author[#{field}]“, @author.#{field}
end
end
DEF
end
end