Calling render from a module

Rails
1

Ok, so, I’m trying to write my first gem to learn how it all works.
Basically the gem would just be an extra view helper, so I want any
methods in my module to be accessible in a rails app view.

I want my method to call render, and render a partial I have in my gem’s
app/views/shared folder. When I call “render”, and run my rspec test I
get an undefined method render for the rspec stuff. I’ve tried including
ActionView::Base, and requiring it, and even tried just calling
ActionView::Base.new.render :partial => ‘shared/my_partial’. Calling it
directly will call the render method, but I get a Missing partial error.
Same thing happens if I call the full path to that partial.

My gem is structured like

MyGem
-lib
–my_gem.rb
-app
–views
—shared
----_my_partial.html.erb
-spec
…

Thanks

~Jeremy

2

I took a look at how the Devise gem is doing it, but I don’t see that
they are actually calling the partial out. I’m assuming the views are
just for the generator in that instance. I thought about just writing
the HTML inside the method, but that feels hackish to me, plus, I would
like to determine if the user is using haml, or erb, then render out a
different partial depending.

I’m also open to ideas of a better way to do this. Again, this is just a
learning experience for me, so I would like to know the best way to go
about doing this.

Thanks!

~Jeremy

3

On Feb 21, 3:39am, Jeremy W. [email protected] wrote:

Same thing happens if I call the full path to that partial.
rspec should realise that the code under test is a helper is the spec
is in spec/helpers (and so should add the required stuff to the test
environment that allows you to call actionviewy stuff.

Fred

4

Frederick C. wrote in post #983169:

On Feb 21, 3:39am, Jeremy W. [email protected] wrote:

Same thing happens if I call the full path to that partial.
rspec should realise that the code under test is a helper is the spec
is in spec/helpers (and so should add the required stuff to the test
environment that allows you to call actionviewy stuff.

Fred

I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand. Are you saying I should require all
the ActionView stuff in my test? That might make the test pass, but when
I go to use the actual gem in development, it would fail, wouldn’t it?

5

On Feb 22, 9:52pm, Jeremy W. [email protected] wrote:

I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand. Are you saying I should require all
the ActionView stuff in my test? That might make the test pass, but when
I go to use the actual gem in development, it would fail, wouldn’t it?

No. I’m saying that if your spec file is in spec/helpers then rspec
should assume that it’s dealing with a view helper, and so will set up
the test environment accordingly.

Fred