Rails 3, Rake and url_for

April 29, 2010 7 Comments

Before I start I just want to make it clear that I know the arguments against using url_for in models and even in rake tasks. Sometimes however it makes sense to use_url for in a rake task. In my case I am trying to query another site’s api which requires the URI of the page on my site that I want to gather information about.

The approach in Rails 2.x

task :collect_stats => :environment do
  include ActionController::UrlWriter

  default_url_options[:host] = 'www.example.com'
  url = url_for(:controller => 'foo', :action => 'bar')
end

Notice that because there is no current request you have to specify the

default_url_options[:host]

as the helper has no idea what the host will be otherwise.

Doing the same thing in Rails 3

The following code does the same thing in Rails 3.

task :collect_stats => :environment do
  include ActionDispatch::Routing::UrlFor
  #include ActionController::UrlFor  #requires a request object
  include ActionController::PolymorphicRoutes
  include Rails.application.routes.url_helpers

  default_url_options[:host] = 'www.example.com'
  url = url_for(post)
end

There are two key points to notice here.

  1. The first is that I have included ActionDispatch::Routing::UrlFor rather than ActionController::UrlFor. The latter requires a request object and will attempt to automatically fill in the host name. Since we are in a rake task there is no request and the method will fail.
  2. The second thing is that I have also included two additional includes. The will allow you to work with polymorphic routes and named routes, giving a bit more flexibility.

Just a short snippet that might be of use to people but if there are any improvements out there then please let me know and I will update this. You can of course hard code the routes but there are scenarios where it makes much more sense to make use of the helpers provided, especially when using polymorphic routes.

Update: 08/06/2010

In the comments Jakub has stated that in the latest version of Rails you don’t need to include the polymorphic routes.

include ActionController::PolymorphicRoutes

Filed under Rails Tagged with , , , ,

Render ‘Rails Style’ Partials in Sinatra

April 14, 2010 1 Comment

We love Sinatra. Not only does it make a great framework in its own right but in addition it can be used to mimic parts of rails in a real simple environment for front-end designers. Instead of having to get them set up and explain the whole of rails they just get a nice simple app to work on without having to worry about creating different controllers or even models.

Although there is not a 1 to 1 translation between a rails app and a sinatra one, it does allow these developers to work with things like haml in a really easy to work with environment.

One of the features that I was asked for recently though was “How do you render a partial in sinatra?”

Rendering Partials in Sinatra

Sinatra is a super-lightweight framework. Because of this it doesn’t have the notion of partials built into it. However, a partial, in its simplest form, is nothing more than a call out to render the template as a string and then embed that string into your page.

A quick look at the sinatra sites FAQs shows that partials can be rendered in the following way in erb.

<%= erb(:mypartial, :layout => false) %>

In haml you could use exactly the same thing but call haml like so.

= haml(:mypartial, :layout => false)

Notice that

:layout => false

is set to ensure that the layout is not also rendered.

Going a little further

The FAQs also recommend using the code in the following gist.

http://gist.github.com/119874

The code shows a helper method called partial. This helper method can be used to render a partial from your code. The helper also allows you to pass collections and is a really cool and useful piece of code.

Making things work the rails way

The above helpers are great and really useful for sinatra. However, what if you want to render a partial the ‘rails way’? In our situation we were using sinatra as a mock up of what would eventually be brought into a rails app. Rails allows partials to be included like so:

<%= render :partial => 'partial_name' %>

By overriding the built in render method in Sinatra it is actually possible to mimic the rails partials. I came up with the following helper to quickly mock things up. The helper checks to see if the first argument passed to is a hash and if that contains they key :partial. If so it renders the partial, if not it just uses the default render method.

  helpers do
    def render(*args)
      if args.first.is_a?(Hash) && args.first.keys.include?(:partial)
        return haml "_#{args.first[:partial]}".to_sym, :layout => false
      else
        super
      end
    end
  end

The helper could easily by extended to allow for collections etc but for now it does the job. Any better solutions?

Filed under Rails, ruby, Sinatra Tagged with , , , ,

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