How can I render a partial using a traditional (outside of MVC) erb file in Rails 3?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I wrote following module in Rails 3 to generate .json files using erb templates:

module TemplateGenerator  
    require "erb"       
   
    def generate_menu(website_id)
      menu_template = open_and_read_template("lib/menu.json.erb")

      @website.find(website_id)
      @home_page = @website.pages.first
      create_file(menu_template,"public/menu.json")
  end   
   
    private
   
      def open_and_read_template(file_path)

        file = File.open(file_path, "rb")
          file.read
    end   
   
    def create_file(template,file_name)
      erb = ERB.new( template )
          File.open(file_name, 'w') do |f|

            f.write erb.result(binding)
          end
    end

end

The erb file is:

{
    "text": "Menu",
    "items": [
        {

            "text": "<%= @home_page.title %>",
        },   
        <%= render :partial => 'item', :collection => @home_page.children.sort_by{|c| c.sibling_order} %>

        ]
}

and I’m trying to display this recursive partial:

{
    "text": <%= item.title %>,
    <% if item.children? %>
    "items": [

        <%= render :partial => 'item', :collection => item.children.sort_by{|c| c.sibling_order} %>
    ]
    <% end %>
},

My question is how can I get the render method to work in this instance when I call generate_menu during an action in my application? Is there a better, more ‘rails’ way to create files using an erb template?