Sliding Door Tabs take 2

So, a while back I wrote a quick widget for making sliding door tabs. But it wasn't enough, I wanted *MORE*. I wanted them to be responsive to conditions.

For example, I have a resource User, and I want the "users" tab to stay open no matter which user page I'm on (index, show, edit etc)... *unless*, of course, it happens also to be the "my account" page (ie I'm viewing myself)... for which I already have a tab. This is a cut above just being "on" if we happen to perfectly match the current url.

So I rewrote the helper methods. Now my tabs come with optional separators (that can be independantly styled), and with the ability to pass in a conditional to override whether or not to show the tab as "on".

  def make_tab(t)
    # use the conditional if one was passed - default to current page 
    cond = t.has_key?(:cond) ? t[:cond] : current_page?(t[:options])
    content_tag "li", link_to(t[:name], url_for(t[:options])),
                             :class => (cond ? 'current' : nil)
  end

  # Builds a tab that is just a separator
  def make_separator
    "<li class='separator'></li>"
  end

  # Make tablist out of a given set of tabs.
  def build_tablist(tabs, do_sep = true)
    list = "<ul>"
    tabs.each_with_index do |t,i|
      list << make_tab(t)
      list << make_separator if do_sep && i != tabs.size - 1
    end
    list << "</ul>"
    list
  end

And an example of use (that assumes existance of restful_auth)

<div id="topnav" class="tabNav">

    <% # standard set of tabs
      tabs = [] 
      if logged_in?
        tabs << {:name => 'dashboard', :options => dashboard_url}
        tabs << {:name => "my account", :options => user_path(current_user)}
        if current_user.is_admin?
          tabs << {:name => "widgets", :options => widgets_path, 
            :cond => (current_controller?(hash_for_widgets_path))}
          tabs << {:name => "users", :options => users_path, 
            :cond => (current_controller?(hash_for_users_path) && 
                      !current_page?(user_path(current_user)))}
        end
        tabs << {:name => 'logout', :options => logout_url}
      else
        tabs << {:name => 'login', :options => login_url}
        tabs << {:name => 'forgot password', :options => forgot_password_url}
      end
-%>
      
  <!-- tabbed browsing of main site areas --> 
  <%= build_tablist tabs, false -%>
</div>

Note that it also uses a convenience function: "current_controller?" This is below and could almost certainly be done better... but it currently serves to check if the given url-options match the current controller.

  # determines if the given set of options contains the current controller
  def current_controller?(options)
    return true if current_page?(options) # trivial case
    if options.respond_to?(:has_key?) && options.has_key?(:controller)
      return options[:controller] == controller.controller_name
    end
    # try matching it - assumes it's a string url
    options =~ /#{controller.controller_name}/
  end