How best to DRY will_paginate options

Question

I have 8 controllers using will_paginate to paginate their index pages. I\'d like to override the defaults for \"Previous\" and \"Next\" on each without having to specify the s

Answer 1

I'm assuming you're doing something like this in your controllers:

will_paginate @collection, :previous_label => '< go back', :next_label => 'go forward >'

Your problem is that you want to use these labels everywhere in your application, so it's pointless to repeat them. In that case, you could define a helper like this:

def paginate(collection, options = {})
  defaults = {
    :previous_label => '< go back',
    :next_label     => 'go forward >',
  }
  options = defaults.merge(options)

  will_paginate collection, options
end

After that, calling paginate @collection in your views will use your defaults and still let you override them if necessary.

EDIT: suweller's response is definitely the better way to go in this case, especially considering it's approved by mislav, the plugin creator :). I'd completely forgotten about the translation file option. My solution could probably be useful in the general case, when the helper is not configurable in a similar way.