Most Rails developers use the flash to store a single message -- something like `flash[:message]` -- and call it a day. But what if you want to tell a user their widget was saved *and* give them a heads-up that they're approaching a limit? Lumping everything into one message with one style isn't great.
Good news: the flash is a `HashWithIndifferentAccess`, which means you can use whatever keys you like. Let's put that to work.
In your controller, just pick the key that best describes what you're communicating:
```ruby
if @widget.save
flash[:info] = "Your widget has been saved."
flash[:notice] = "There are now #{Widget.count} widgets."
redirect_to @widget and return
else
flash.now[:warning] = "I couldn't save your widget."
render :action => "edit"
end
```
Then in your view, iterate over the flash and render each message with its own class:
```ruby
<%= flash.sort.collect do |level, message|
content_tag(:p, message, :class => "flash #{level}", :id => "flash_#{level}")
end.join %>
```
If that `@widget` was saved successfully, you'd get clean, easily styled markup:
```html
Your widget has been saved.
There are now 29 widgets.
```
Each message type gets its own CSS class, so you can style warnings differently from informational notices. A little CSS and your users will always know exactly what kind of feedback they're getting.
In the interest of readability, that flash loop in the view really ought to be extracted into a helper -- but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
