Application Helpers

Tag Helpers

Tag helpers are the basic building blocks used to construct html 'tags' within a view template. There are three major functions for this category: tag, content_tag and input_tag.

The tag and content_tag are for building arbitrary html tags with a name and specified options. If the tag contains 'content' within then content_tag is used. For example:

tag(:br, style: 'clear:both') # => <br style="clear:both" />
content_tag(:p, 'demo', class: 'light') # => <p class="light">demo</p>

The input_tag is used to build tags that are related to accepting input from the user:

input_tag :text, class: 'demo' # => <input type="text" class="demo" />
input_tag :password, value: 'secret', class: 'demo'

Note that all of these accept html options and result in returning a string containing html tags.

List of Tag Helpers

• tag(name, options = nil, open = false)
  • Creates an html tag with the given name and options
  • tag(:br, style: 'clear:both', open: true) => <br style="clear:both">
• content_tag(name, content, options = nil, &block)
  • Creates an html tag with given name, content and options
  • content_tag(:p, 'demo', class: 'light') => <p class="light">demo</p>
  • content_tag(:p, class: 'dark') { ...content... } => <p class="dark">...content...</p>
• input_tag(type, options = {})
  • Creates an html input field with given type and options
  • input_tag :text, class: 'demo'
  • input_tag :password, value: 'secret', class: 'demo'

last updated: 2025-12-02