Module: Ramaze::View::Erector

Includes:
Erector
Defined in:
lib/ramaze/view/erector.rb

Overview

Adapter for Erector. Erector is a view engine that works a bit like Markably but offers a much more pleasant way of building your views. By creating classes in plain ruby you can generate layouts and views without having to write a single line of HTML.

Each layout or view is a simple class that matches the filename. A layout named "default.erector" would result in a class with the name "Default". It's very important to know that you should ALWAYS extend Ramaze::View::Erector. Without extending this class you won't be able to use Erector at all.

When working with the Erector adapter there are a few things you'll need to know. First all your views and layouts should be classes as explained earlier on. Each class should have at least a single method named "content". This method is executed by Erector and the HTML it produces will either be stored in the @content instance variable (if it's a view) or sent to the browser if it's a layout. The @content variable can be displayed by calling the rawtext() method and passing the variable as it's parameter.

Using helper methods, such as the render_* methods is also possible although slightly different than you're used to. Due to the way the Erector adapter works it isn't possible to directly call a helper method. As a workaround you can access these methods from the "@controller" instance variable. Don't forget to render the output of these helpers using rawtext(). Feel free to submit any patches if you think you have a better solution so that developers don't have to use the @controller instance variable.

Examples:

# This is the code for the layout
class Default < Erector::Widget
  html do
    head do
      title 'Erector Layout'
    end

    body do
      rawtext @content
    end

  end
end

# And here's the view
class Index < Erector::Widget
  def content
    h2 'This is the view'
  end
end

# Render an extra view
class ExtraView < Erector::Widget
  def content
    rawtext @controller.render_view :some_extra_view
  end
end

Author:

Class Method Summary (collapse)

Class Method Details

+ (String) call(action, string)

The call method is called whenever a view is loaded. A view can either be a layout or an actual view since they're treated the same way. First the view is loaded, followed by the layout.

Parameters:

  • action (Object) —

    Object containing a copy of the current Action class data.

  • string (String) —

    The content of the currently loaded layout. This variable isn't used by the Erector adapter but is required since Ramaze expects 2 parameters. Usually this string is used to inline load (or evaluate) the content of a view.

Returns:

  • (String) —

    The generated HTML.

Author:

  • Yorick Peterse



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# File 'lib/ramaze/view/erector.rb', line 85

def self.call action, string
  # Return the contents unless a view has been defined
  return string, 'text/html' unless action.view

  # Evaluate the class so we can use it. The content of "string"
  # is a full blown class that should always have a "content" method.
  #eval string, action.binding
  eval string

  # Generate the class name based on the filename.
  # Class names are a CamelCased version of the filename (without the
  # extension).
  klass    = File.basename action.view, '.erector'
  klass    = klass.camel_case
  view_obj = self.const_get(klass)

  # Synchronize the methods of action.instance with the view. These
  # methods can be accessed by calling @controller.METHOD
  action.variables[:controller] = action.instance

  # Now that we have all the data we can start rendering the HTML.
  # Note that we pass the action.variables hash to the new() method. This
  # is done to give the view access to all existing (instance) variables.
  # Syncing them using action.copy_variables didn't seem to do the trick.
  html = view_obj.new(action.variables).to_html

  # All done
  return html, 'text/html'
end