Ruby on Rails puts in erb

Question

I'm working on a web application that has a view where data is fetched and parsed from a text file (the textfile is only available at the backend, not to the user). I've written a function that takes in the text file and converts it to an array of strings, it's called txt_to_arr. Then I have another function line_fetcher which just calls txt_to_arr and outputs a random string from the array.

In my view, I call the controller's function as so: <% line_fetcher %>.

I've put both txt_to_arr and line_fetcher into the view controller's helper rb file, and when I run rails s, the random string is not rendered at all. I've also tried <% puts line_fetcher %>

I've checked in Bash that the function does output random strings from the text file, so the function does work correctly. Also, the text file being parsed is in the public folder. Does anyone have an idea why this might be?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

In ERB: The <% %> signify that there is Ruby code here to be interpreted. The <%= %> says interpreted and output the ruby code, ie display/print the result.

So it seems you need to use the extra = sign if you want to output in a standard ERB file.

<%= line_fetcher %>

Answer 2

Simple erb like <%= line_fetcher %> would work good for simple variables.

But if you want output of any model/database instance then do:

<%= ModelName.first.inspect %>

Note the inspect word.

And in case of using HAML do:

=ModelName.first.inspect

Answer 3

Try placing the code in the controller and assigning the output to a variable using

a=`line_fetcher` (note the backtics) as detailed at

http://rubyquicktips.com/post/5862861056/execute-shell-commands

and then <%= a %> in your view.

and place the file in the root of your rails app

Answer 4

Use <%= %> to output something in your view, so:

<%= line_fetcher %>