render arguments :locals and :layout only available on partials?

rubyonrails-talk
1

It looks to me like the :locals and :layout arguments for the render call don't do anything unless you are rendering a :partial.

Is that right or am I misdiagnosing what's happening to me?

2

I think you are right with :locals as that is specifically designed for passing variables into the partial to be used within the local scope of that partial. But :layout is for any render. You can specify a different layout or tell it to use none, i.e. :layout => false

http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Base.html#M000452

-Danimal