Outputting data with erb and middleman

Question

I'm wanting to output some data and I'm not sure if it is possible or not without changing my data file. Basically I have a YAML file with the following structure

 items: 
   - category: red
     name: super fun times
     note: likes fun
   - category: red
     name: sunshine
     note: wear sunglasses
   - category: blue
     name: crazy face
     note: avoid.

What I'm doing is looping through like so

<% data.options.items.each do |q| %>
  <h2><%= q.category %></h2>
  <p><%= q.name %></p>
<% end %>

I'd like to be able to do is group items by category when it outputs so it would be something like the following.

<h2>red</h2>
<p>super fun times</p>
<p>sunshine</p>

<h2>blue</h2>
<p>crazy face</p>

I pretty much just want to output the category once, list out the items under that category and then when a new category comes up output that one and any relevant data, without having to repeat chunks of code.

Answer 1

An approach you can take is using group_to to cluster the items by their group, resulting in sets of arrays for each category:

<% data.options.items.group_by(&:category).each do |group| %>
  <h2><%= group.first %></h2>
  <% group.last.each do |item| %>
    <p><%= item.name %></p>
  <% end %>
<% end %>

In this scenario, running group_by on the collection of items provides an object with the following format:

{"red"=>[{"category"=>"red", "name"=>"super fun times", "note"=>"likes fun"}, 
{"category"=>"red", "name"=>"sunshine", "note"=>"wear sunglasses"}],
"blue"=>[{"category"=>"blue", "name"=>"crazy face", "note"=>"avoid."}]}

This allows you to then iterate through the object, making it easier to keep the groups separate in the markup.

Hope it helps!