What is the best way to return multiple tags from a Rails Helper?

Question

I want to create a hidden field and create a link in one helper and then output both to my erb.

<%= my_cool_helper \"something\", form %>

Answer 1

There are several ways to do this.

Remember that the existing rails helpers like link_to, etc, just output strings. You can concatenate the strings together and return that (which is what I do most of the time, if things are simple).

EG:

link_to( "something", something_path ) +  #NOTE THE PLUS FOR STRING CONCAT
  form.hidden_field('something'.tableize, :value=>'something')

If you're doing things which are more complicated, you could just put that code in a partial, and have your helper call render :partial.

If you're doing more complicated stuff than even that, then you may want to look at errtheblog's block_to_partial helper, which is pretty cool