Actions on an instance object passed to the view

Question

I have an obj @files which sometimes contain one set of data(one file) and sometimes it contains many files.

I have a create.js.erb and this is what I do at the moment.

<% if @files.new_record? %>
  alert("Failed to upload: <%= j @files.errors.full_messages.join(', ').html_safe %>");
<% else %>
  $(".container").append('<div id="cfile"><%= j render(@files) %></div>');
<% end %>

Then I have a partial called _file.html.erb

<%= file.name %>
<%= file_.id %>

This all works fine but I'm running into problems trying to create a partial for different types of files.

I want to be able to do something like

if file.first.type == image # (Even If the come in groups they would be the same type so i just need one .type field from one of them.)
     $(".different_container").append(render different partial here);
else if file.first.type == doc 
     $(".another_container").append(render another partial here);

How would I go about this? Please ask if i haven't explained something clearly.

Answer 1

So the problem is that @files can be multiple items or a single item. Before you access it, you can wrap it in Array(), like this:

file_type = Array(@files).first.type
if file_type == :something
elsif file_type == :something_else
end

What Array() does is it tries to convert the argument passed to it in to an array. If you pass it a single object, it will return an array with that one object in it. If you pass it an array, it does nothing.

>> Array(1) # => [1]
>> Array(Object.new) # => [Object]
>> Array([1,2,3]) # => [1,2,3]