I'm working on a web application that has a view where data is fetched and parsed from a text file (the textfile is only available at the backend, not to the user). I've written a function that takes in the text file and converts it to an array of strings, it's called txt_to_arr. Then I have another function line_fetcher which just calls txt_to_arr and outputs a random string from the array.
In my view, I call the controller's function as so: <% line_fetcher %>.
I've put both txt_to_arr and line_fetcher into the view controller's helper rb file, and when I run rails s, the random string is not rendered at all. I've also tried <% puts line_fetcher %>
I've checked in Bash that the function does output random strings from the text file, so the function does work correctly. Also, the text file being parsed is in the public folder. Does anyone have an idea why this might be?
Thanks a lot!
Try placing the code in the controller and assigning the output to a variable using
a=`line_fetcher` (note the backtics) as detailed at
http://rubyquicktips.com/post/5862861056/execute-shell-commands
and then <%= a %> in your view.
and place the file in the root of your rails app
Simple erb like <%= line_fetcher %> would work good for simple variables.
But if you want output of any model/database instance then do:
<%= ModelName.first.inspect %>
Note the inspect word.
And in case of using HAML do:
=ModelName.first.inspect
In ERB: The <% %> signify that there is Ruby code here to be interpreted. The <%= %> says interpreted and output the ruby code, ie display/print the result.
So it seems you need to use the extra = sign if you want to output in a standard ERB file.
<%= line_fetcher %>
Use <%= %> to output something in your view, so:
<%= line_fetcher %>
Related
Rails 7 / Ruby 3
I'm currently working on a site that requires code examples to be displayed on a page - I can get these to display utilising the extra % character trick, however, for some of the examples I need to have a variable within them that is resolved (e.g. like the users' own API key etc...).
Consider I have #variable = "Resolved Variable"
<%%= link_to #variable, variable_path %>
Outputs on the page explicitly as
<%= link_to #variable, variable_path %>
But I really need the #variable to resolve and show on the page as:
<%= link_to "Resolved Variable", variable_path %>
I've tried all kinds of escaping the variable, but it seems that <%%= ensures that nothing following it can be resolved.
Any ideas?
Any text you haven't html_encodeed will be displayed as plain text.
My suggestion to you is to create a interpolated string that you could use to generate your intended result. For example:
output_text = "<%= link_to '#{#variable}', variable_path %>"
And, not sure if this is what you're looking for, but you can get a good UI by adding some Javascript library to format you code in the language in intend (in this case Ruby, it seems).
In case that's interesting to you, check the Prism lib, or check how to add it to your project here
I hope this helps.
With kind regards,
Rogerio
<%% in ERB will simply output <%, no more, no less. In particular, it won't attempt to parse the code after <%% as Ruby. However, this doesn't mean that you can't have another <%= ... %> after <%%:
require 'erb'
template = <<-EOD
<%%= link_to <%= #variable.inspect %>, variable_path %>
EOD
#variable = "Resolved Variable"
puts ERB.new(template).result
The inspect method will add quotes around your string and also escape certain characters as needed.
Output:
<%= link_to "Resolved Variable", variable_path %>
Sometimes it's more convenient to print in <%%>. How to do it in Rails?
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/TextHelper.html#method-i-concat
Should be what you are looking for.
E.g. the following statement using concat:
<% concat "Output" %>
is equivalent to:
<%= "Output" %>
In ERB:
The <% %> signify that there is Ruby code here to be interpreted.
The <%= %> says output the ruby code, ie display/print the result.
So it seems you need to use the extra = sign if you want to output in a standard ERB file.
Otherwise, you could look at alternatives to ERB which require less syntax,.. maybe try something like HAML. http://haml-lang.com/tutorial.html
Example:
# ERB
<strong><%= item.title %></strong>
# HAML
%strong= item.title
Is that more convenient?
erb has two method to evaluate inline ruby expressions. The <% which evaluates the expression and the <%= which evaluates and prints. There is no global object to print to within the binding context.
As mentioned by Omar, there is a concat method, which is part of ActionView. This will do what you want.
Unlike a scripting language escape, there is no default output for erb. Since erb is simply a function, and given a template and binding will return a variable, it returns the values of text and functions recursively.
There is hot debate as to how much logic should be allowed in a view, but as little as possible is what most people aim for. If you are putting more code than text in the view, you may want to consider refactoring your code.
I am working on a style guide which displays the code, as well as the output. It is currently structured so that the code only needs to be described once, and is displayed in both its raw and interpreted versions, like so:
<% code = <<PLACE_THE_EXAMPLE_CODE_BETWEEN_THESE_TWO_LINES_EXACTLY_AS_YOU_WANT_IT_TO_APPEAR
<div>
#{ image_tag 'image.png' }
</div>
PLACE_THE_EXAMPLE_CODE_BETWEEN_THESE_TWO_LINES_EXACTLY_AS_YOU_WANT_IT_TO_APPEAR
%>
<%= raw code %>
<%= content_tag :pre, code, class: "prettyprint linenums" %>
This is great, and fairly easy to maintain. The problem comes in with the rails helpers, like image_tag in the above example. The view example correctly displays an image in a div, and the code example displays the relevant HTML. In this case, the relevant HTML includes an anchor tag - the results of the image_tag method, not the call itself.
I would prefer the code examples to display the helper methods, rather that their results. I am able to make this work by specifying the example code in a file, and either rendering or reading the file. I would prefer to make this work by specifying the code in a variable, as above, but I can't seem to get an ERB delimiter to work inside of a string inside of an erb block. Even the simplest case of <% foo = '<%= bar %>' %> doesn't work at all. I've tried playing with the syntax (<%% %%> and % % for example), using details from the official documentation, without much success.
The only information I could find on the matter is here, using <%= "<" + "%=" %> link_to <%= image.css_tag.humanize %> <%= "%" + ">" %> %>, which does not work in this use case (if at all).
So, is there a way to specify a string that contains a ERB end-delimiter (%>) in an ERB string, or am I stuck using the slightly clunkier file-read method? Thanks!
Edit:
What I would like to end up with is a working version of this:
<%# Idealized code - does not work %>
<% code = <<PLACE_THE_EXAMPLE_CODE_BETWEEN_THESE_TWO_LINES_EXACTLY_AS_YOU_WANT_IT_TO_APPEAR
<div>
<% image_tag 'image.png' %>
</div>
PLACE_THE_EXAMPLE_CODE_BETWEEN_THESE_TWO_LINES_EXACTLY_AS_YOU_WANT_IT_TO_APPEAR
%>
So that <%= raw code %> would (continue to) output:
<div>
<img src="/images/image.png" alt="Image" />
</div>
And <%= content_tag :pre, code, class: "prettyprint linenums" %> would output:
<pre class="prettyprint linenums">
<div>
<% image_tag 'image.png' %>
</div>
</pre>
Instead of what it currently does when using a variable, which is:
<pre class="prettyprint linenums">
<div>
<img src="/images/image.png" alt="Image" />
</div>
</pre>
I want users to be able to copy the code example and paste it into a new view, without having to translate HTML back into the helpers that produce them. I think what I basically need is an alternative ERB delimiter, in the same way that ' and " (or even %q{}) vary for strings. It seems that even though the final ERB delimiter is occurring inside of a string, it is being actually processed as the end of the block. The simplest case of <% foo = '<%= bar %>' %> demonstrates somewhat what I want to accomplish. In a generator, you might use <% foo = '<%%= bar %>' %> (or something similar), to tell it not to process as ERB right then and there. This all works fine when reading from a file, or even in a pure rb file (like a helper), but it makes the most sense to put it in the view, in this case, as it is intended to be easily manipulated by our designers.
If I'm understanding you right, your real problem is that heredocs behave like double quotes as far as interpolation is concerned. So all you need is a quoting mechanism that behaves like single quotes. Ruby has lots of string quoting mechanisms, in particular we have %q{...}:
<% code = %q{
<div>
#{ image_tag 'image.png' }
</div>
} %>
You can use other delimiters if you'd like: %q|...|, %q(...), etc. There's still a change of course but at least you don't have to worry about interpolation problems.
If you really want to use a heredoc, you can specify the heredoc terminator with quotes and the corresponding quoting style will apply to the content:
<% code = <<'PLACE_THE_EXAMPLE_CODE_BETWEEN_THESE_TWO_LINES_EXACTLY_AS_YOU_WANT_IT_TO_APPEAR'
<div>
#{ image_tag 'image.png' }
</div>
PLACE_THE_EXAMPLE_CODE_BETWEEN_THESE_TWO_LINES_EXACTLY_AS_YOU_WANT_IT_TO_APPEAR
%>
The single quotes in <<'PLACE...' specify that single quoting rules (i.e. no interpolation) apply to the heredoc's content.
Of course none of that stuff will work with embedded ERB like this:
<% code = %q{
<div>
<% ... %>
</div>
} %>
because the ERB parser will see the first %> as the closing delimiter for the outer <% code... part. Fear not, I think I have a plan that will work without involving gross hacks or too much work.
Some preliminaries:
Rails uses Erubis for ERB processing.
Erubis allows you to change the delimiters with the :pattern option to its constructor.
Rails uses Tilt and Sprockets to handle the template processing pipeline, these allow you to make the right things happen to pancakes.js.coffee.erb in the right order.
Using the above you can add your own template format that is ERB with a different delimiter and you can have Rails use this new format to handle your "special" sections before the normal ERB processing can make a mess of things.
First you need to hook up Tilt. If you have a look at lib/tilt/erb.rb in your Tilt installation, you'll see the Erubis stuff in Tilt::ErubisTemplate at the bottom. You should be able to subclass Tilt::ErubisTemplate and provide a prepare override that adds, say, a :pattern => '<!--% %-->' option and punts to the superclass. Then register this with Tilt and Sprockets in a Rails initializer with something like this:
Tilt.register(Your::Template::Subclass, 'klerb') # "kl" for "kludge" :)
Rails.application.assets.register_engine('.klerb', Your::Template::Subclass)
Now your application should be able to handle .klerb files with <!--% ... %--> as the template delimiters. And you can also chain your klerb with erb using names like pancakes.html.erb.klerb and the file will go through klerb before the ERB; this means that templates like this (in a file called whatever.html.erb.klerb):
<!--% code = <<PLACE_THE_EXAMPLE_CODE_BETWEEN_THESE_TWO_LINES_EXACTLY_AS_YOU_WANT_IT_TO_APPEAR
<div>
<% image_tag 'image.png' %>
</div>
PLACE_THE_EXAMPLE_CODE_BETWEEN_THESE_TWO_LINES_EXACTLY_AS_YOU_WANT_IT_TO_APPEAR
%-->
<!--%= "code = escape_the_erb_as_needed(%q{#{code}})" %-->
<% do_normal_erb_stuff %>
will do The Right Thing.
You'd need a helper to implement the escape_the_erb_as_needed functionality of course; a little experimentation should help you sort out what needs to be escape and in what way.
All that might look a bit complicated but it is really pretty straight forward. I've added custom template processing steps using Tilt and Sprockets and it turned out to be pretty simple in the end; figuring out which simple things to do took some work but I've already done that work for you:
Tilt::Template subclass, you get this by piggy backing on Tilt::ErubisTemplate.
Register with Tilt by calling Tilt.register.
Register with Sprockets by calling Rails.application.assets.register_engine.
...
Profit.
I've got the following problem: I have rhtml (html minced together with ruby inside <% %> and <%= %> tags) stored in a database which I want to render. The information is acquired through a query. I need to be able to evaluate the information I get from the database as though as it was normal content inside the .erb-file. What I currently have:
<% #mymods.each do |mod| %>
<%= render_text(mod["html"])%>
<% end %>
Where mod["html"] is the variable containing the rhtml-code and #mymods an array of objects from the query. I have currently no idea what function I should use (render_text does, of course, not work).
Help is greatly appreciated.
/TZer0
You can use the ERB object to render text without the text being in a file.
Just pass the text with the <%= %> tags. You could put something like the following as an application_helper function.
def render_erb_text(text, args={})
b = binding
template = ERB.new(text, 0, "%<>")
template.result(b)
end
And then in your template
<%= render_erb_text("<%= %w(hi how are you).join(' - ') %>")%>
You might also consider rendering the text in your controller as you can handle any render errors better there than during view evaluation.
Take a look at the ERB documentation for more information regarding variable binding etc.
I'm not familiar with the details of how this works under the covers, but there could be some serious risk in running this code on bad or malicious database data. Evaluating ruby code from user input or any un-vetted source should be done very carefully, if at all.
Sometimes it's more convenient to print in <%%>. How to do it in Rails?
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/TextHelper.html#method-i-concat
Should be what you are looking for.
E.g. the following statement using concat:
<% concat "Output" %>
is equivalent to:
<%= "Output" %>
In ERB:
The <% %> signify that there is Ruby code here to be interpreted.
The <%= %> says output the ruby code, ie display/print the result.
So it seems you need to use the extra = sign if you want to output in a standard ERB file.
Otherwise, you could look at alternatives to ERB which require less syntax,.. maybe try something like HAML. http://haml-lang.com/tutorial.html
Example:
# ERB
<strong><%= item.title %></strong>
# HAML
%strong= item.title
Is that more convenient?
erb has two method to evaluate inline ruby expressions. The <% which evaluates the expression and the <%= which evaluates and prints. There is no global object to print to within the binding context.
As mentioned by Omar, there is a concat method, which is part of ActionView. This will do what you want.
Unlike a scripting language escape, there is no default output for erb. Since erb is simply a function, and given a template and binding will return a variable, it returns the values of text and functions recursively.
There is hot debate as to how much logic should be allowed in a view, but as little as possible is what most people aim for. If you are putting more code than text in the view, you may want to consider refactoring your code.