This video covers how to setup and user Zend View Helpers. I also cover how state is managed within the class. Next week I'll show you how you can use this technique with a bit of AJAX to make those View Helpers shine! I'll post the project code for both videos with part 2.

Have you ever wanted to access helper methods outside of the view layer? In this episode I show you a couple ways to do just that.

If you have complex view logic, this can easily lead to helper methods which call each other. See how to refactor this out into another object in this episode.

Do you ever need to generate HTML code in a helper method? Placing it directly in Ruby strings is not very pretty. Learn a great way to generate HTML through Markaby in this episode.

Rails designates one helper module per controller, but that shouldn't stop you from making custom helper modules to help structure the code. Learn how in this episode.

If you try to create a helper method which accepts a block, you will run into a few gotchas. Learn the secrets of blocks in views in this episode.

When you add a custom route, make it a named route so you have url helper methods to easily link to that new route. See episode for details.