module Ramaze::View::Erector
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.
@example
# 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 Yorick Peterse
Public Class Methods
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.
@author Yorick Peterse @param [Object] action Object containing a copy of the current Action
class data.
@param [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.
@return [String] The generated HTML.
# 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