create links using erb and mysql

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Hi,
I have a database directory.

On my home page,
I have these links for (which I handle manually for now):
A B C D E......(upto ) Z

Each link is hyperlinked only if there is a name starting with that
letter. If there is no name starting with that letter then that letter
will be not be hyperlinked.

e.g. C will remain as just text if there is no name starting with C in
the db.

Further, clicking on A takes me to another page,
where there are these links:
AA-AB, AC-AD,....
as before,any link e.g. AC-AD will be hyperlinked only if there is any
name in the database which starts with Ac or Ad.

Clicking on any link, eg. AC-AD will be take us to the final page,
where through a DB query I display all the names starting with AC-AD.

Except for the final page, I am the handling other links (A,B, AA-AB)
manually so far.

Is there a way to dynamically assign the hyperlinks through a db
query?

I know how to create the html using erb.

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[Marnen Laibow-Koser]

Hi,
I have a database directory.

On my home page,
I have these links for (which I handle manually for now):
A B C D E......(upto ) Z

Each link is hyperlinked only if there is a name starting with that
letter. If there is no name starting with that letter then that letter
will be not be hyperlinked.
[...]
Is there a way to dynamically assign the hyperlinks through a db
query?

The interface you just described seems like a bit of a disaster, and
there are probably nicer ways to do it. But...

It should be possible to see if you can retrieve one record from the DB
in the relevant alphabetic range. If so, then make a link. If not,
don't. It's that simple.

I know how to create the html using erb.

You might want to look at Haml, which gives you prettier syntax and CSS
abstraction.

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Best,