Using ERB to generate file on disk?

Rails
1

Hi,

I would like to write form data into a file, and I would like
to know if there’s a way for me to use an ERB template
directly to output the file to disk?

I was going to use a series of puts(“Full name: @order.full_name”)
statements, but thought, there MUST be a better way!

any help or advice on what would be the most efficient way to
tackle this in RoR would be much appreciated.

ex ERB I used for generating the e-mail:

order.rhtml

Full name: <%= @order.full_name %>
<%= @order.notes %>
<%= render(:partial => “./line_item”, :collection =>
@order.line_items) %

__
Andrea

2

Andrea B. wrote:

tackle this in RoR would be much appreciated.

ex ERB I used for generating the e-mail:

order.rhtml

Full name: <%= @order.full_name %>
<%= @order.notes %>
<%= render(:partial => “./line_item”, :collection =>
@order.line_items) %

As I understand your question you have an ERB template and instead of
rendering it to the screen you want to render the template to a file on
the disk. One way of doing this is to use the render_to_string function
from Rails. Check out:

http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Base.html#M000268

–
Cheers,

  • Jacob A.
3

Hi Jacob,

Thank you very much for your help, this seems to be exactly what I
was
looking for! I just have one question about usage.

The documentation says:
“Renders according to the same rules as
render,
but returns the result in a string instead of
sending
it as the response body to the browser.”

Does this mean it takes the ENTIRE ERB template (multiline) and
puts it into one long string? or does it convert each line of the
string into an item in a COLLECTION?

puts(template) # will this put all of it in?

or do I need to loop over and build the file one string at a time

for x in template
puts(x)
end

thanks again,

__
Andrea

4

Does this mean it takes the ENTIRE ERB template (multiline) and
puts it into one long string? or does it convert each line of the
string into an item in a COLLECTION?

string

5

Hi,

Everything is in the ERB docs:
http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/erb/rdoc/classes/ERB.html.

Small example from it:

require “erb”

Create template.

template = %q{
From: James Edward G. II [email protected]
To: <%= to %>
Subject: Addressing Needs

<%= to[/\w+/] %>:

Just wanted to send a quick note assuring that your needs are

being
addressed.

I want you to know that my team will keep working on the issues,
especially:

<%# ignore numerous minor requests -- focus on priorities %>
% priorities.each do |priority|
  * <%= priority %>
% end

Thanks for your patience.

James Edward G. II

}.gsub(/^ /, ‘’)

message = ERB.new(template, 0, “%<>”)

Set up template data.

to = “Community Spokesman <spokesman@ruby_community.org>”
priorities = [ “Run Ruby Q.”,
“Document Modules”,
“Answer Questions on Ruby T.” ]

Produce result.

email = message.result
puts email

Generates:

From: James Edward G. II [email protected]
To: Community Spokesman <spokesman@ruby_community.org>
Subject: Addressing Needs

Community:

Just wanted to send a quick note assuring that your needs are being
addressed.

I want you to know that my team will keep working on the issues,
especially:

  * Run Ruby Q.
  * Document Modules
  * Answer Questions on Ruby T.

Thanks for your patience.

James Edward G. II

You may put your template in separate file to clean up code and use
some rhtml editor with syntax highlighting.

Wojtek