Howto : create a builder and formatter

Sometimes the fancygrid setup might get very large and you wish to have it in some other place, to not clutter your controller action. For this you can pass a builder class to the options on setup.

    fancygrid_for :users, :builder => UsersGridBuilder do |grid|
      grid.find
    end

Then define the builder anywhere you like. In that builder you can perform the setup and further define formatter methods for the columns.

    class UsersGridBuilder < Fancygrid::Grid
      # this method will be called on initialization
      # all default options and the ones you passed are in the options parameter
      def apply_options(options)
        # call super to perform basic initialization
        # you could skip this and do your own
        super
        
        # perform all setup as you would do in the fancygrid setup block
        self.attributes :id, :email, username
        self.columns_for :contact do |c|
          c.attributes :street, :zipcode, :city
        end
      end

      # this will format the column that has the users.id identifier
      def format_user_id value
        "ID-#{value}"
      end

      # this will format the column that has the contacts.zipcode identifier
      def format_contacts_zipcode value
        value.to_s.split().join("-")
      end
    end

To define column formatter you have to know the columns identifier. An identifier is generated from the table name of the resource in target and the column name.