Rails Helper for File List

I've wanted to have a list of files to display on one a page in my Rails app, with stacked ULs that recurse through "public/filer", and all it's subdirectories, showing links to the actual files for download.

After a while of googling and experimenting, this helper is what I came up with, it can easily be called from a view with

   1  <%= raw list %>

. You can see this snippet in action here.

   1  def list(path = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/filer" )
   2    html =""
   3      glob = Dir.glob("#{path}/*").sort!
   4      for i in glob
   5        html << "<li>#{File.basename(i)} <ul>#{list i}</ul></li>" if File.directory?(i)
   6      end
   7      for i in glob
   8        html << "<li>#{ link_to File.basename(i), relativepath(i) } </li>" if File.file?(i)
   9      end
  10    html
  11  end
  12  
  13  def relativepath(abspath)
  14    path = abspath.split(File::SEPARATOR)
  15    rel = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public".split(File::SEPARATOR)
  16    while path.first == rel.first
  17      path.shift
  18      rel.shift
  19    end
  20    file = "/#{path.join(File::SEPARATOR)}"
  21  end

The two seperate "for" loops are necessary to get the directories to display before the files. While this can be solved by other, probably more elegant ways, this seemed to be the quickest and easiest solution.