Dynamic content outside of <%= yeild %> in layout

rubyonrails-talk
1

The way that I do this is with content_for. You can use content_for_layout in your main layouts to display individual view content (this is an alternate to yield - I think yield is deprecated?). In the same way you can put content_for_XXX in your layout and have that replaced as well. An example might be the easiest:

In your layout:

< if !@content_for_sidebar.blank? %>    <%= @content_for_sidebar %> <% end %>

In your individual views:

<% content_for 'sidebar' do -%>    <p>Put some content here!</p> <% end %>

Note that you don't need the if statement in the layout if you always fill out the content_for_sidebar but in my views I often leave some content sections empty.

Jon

2

The way that I do this is with content_for. You can use content_for_layout in your main layouts to display individual view content (this is an alternate to yield - I think yield is deprecated?). In the same way you can put content_for_XXX in your

layout and have that replaced as well. An example might be the easiest:

In your layout:

< if !@content_for_sidebar.blank? %> <%= @content_for_sidebar %> <% end %> It is better to use <%= yield ‘sidebar’ %> instead.of <%= @content_for_sidebar %>.

In your individual views:

<% content_for ‘sidebar’ do -%>

Put some content here!

<% end %>

Note that you don’t need the if statement in the layout if you always fill out the content_for_sidebar but in my views I often leave some

content sections empty.

If you just need to prepare data for your sidebar, you can use combination of common partial + before_filter in e.g. ApplicationController to prepare data for partial.

But if your sidebar is dependant on particular section, I would suggest using nested_layouts plugin (http://nested-layouts.rubyforge.org) and “content_for” helper (described above). So for every “section” (a group of pages with the same sidebar) you could use the same inner layout that would prepare sidebar content and wrap page content in outer (your main) layout. Take a look at nested_layouts plugin documentation - it has example of just what (I guess) you need.

3

Jonathon, You are right. From the rails docs:

NOTE: Beware that content_for is ignored in caches. So you shouldn't use it for elements that are going to be fragment cached.

The deprecated way of accessing a content_for block was to use a instance variable named @@content_for_#{name_of_the_content_block}@. So <%= content_for('footer') %> would be avaiable as <%= @content_for_footer %>. The preferred notation now is <%= yield :footer %>.

It is always good when I learn something by answering a question!

Jon

4

I thought content_for was depricated.

Not exactly. Accessing @content_for_(...) is deprecated (see Jon W.'s post), but the content_for() method itself is not deprecated. Or at least that's how I read the docs.