render_anywhere

Out of the box, Rails can render templates in a controller context only. This little gem allows for calling "render" from anywhere: models, background jobs, rake tasks, you name it.

Installation

    gem install render_anywhere

Usage

Put render_anywhere in your Gemfile:

    gem 'render_anywhere', :require => false

In your Rails app, in a rake task, model, background job, or where ever you like, require render_anywhere, include the module and call render with the same arguments as ActionController::Base#render takes. It will return a string.

    require 'render_anywhere'

    class AnyClass
      include RenderAnywhere

      def build_html
        html = render :template => 'normal/template/reference',
                      :layout => 'application'
        html
      end
      # Include an additional helper
      # If being used in a rake task, you may need to require the file(s)
      # Ex: require Rails.root.join('app', 'helpers', 'blog_pages_helper')
      def include_helper(helper_name)
        set_render_anywhere_helpers(helper_name)
      end

      # Apply an instance variable to the controller
      # If you need to use instance variables instead of locals, just call this method as many times as you need.
      def set_instance_variable(var, value)
        set_instance_variable(var, value)
      end

      class RenderingController < RenderAnywhere::RenderingController
        # include custom modules here, define accessors, etc. For example:
        attr_accessor :current_user
        helper_method :current_user
      end

      # If you define custom RenderingController, don't forget to override this method
      def rendering_controller
        @rendering_controller ||= self.class.const_get("RenderingController").new
      end
    end

Thanks

Yapp, whose CTO (me) kindly agreed to open source this library. App yourself!

The basic approach used here came from this gist by Julien Guimont aka juggy. Thanks!

Contributing

Run tests with rake or rspec.

Run tests against different versions of rails with appraisal rake or appraisal rspec.

Author

Luke Melia, @lukemelia, lukemelia.com

License

The MIT License. Copyright (c) 2011, Yapp, Inc.