A quick tech post to share knowledge:
If you need a counter, iterator, index, loop variable number type thing inside a partial rendering a collection then you can simply use an undocumented counter called [partialname]_counter.
render :partial => 'parrot', :collection => @parrots
Then in _parrot.html.erb you can use:
parrot_counter
I like this like I like each_with_index. :)
Rails2 foot note: I think the :collection option can be dropped in my example with the names I’ve used here but I’ve left it in for clarity.
Update:
View the official api doc on this here:
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Partials.html
2nd paragraph of ‘Rendering a collection of partials’