sub-layouts

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have a nice layout for my app, but for some actions I want to use a shared sub layout. Anyone have ideas what the best practice would be? I have a method that works, but I am not sure if it is the 'rails way' of doing things, anyone care to critique it? I have tried the following...

1) making my action template call render :partial, :collection, :layout. The good new here is that it wraps the layout around the whole collection (not around each item in the collection) and doesn't blow away my main layout. The bad news is the sub-layout and collection are repeated as many times as there are items in the collection. This seems like a rails bug. The layout should be applied once around the whole collection, or once for each item in the collection, not both.

2) applying a layout to the render :action in the controller. This blows away my main layout. This is because i am rendering a template, not a partial, right?

3) using content_for to define a sub-layout. this works, but I feel like there should be an easier way. i am also not sure yet what would happen when i don't want a sub-layout. I guess I could make a _no_sub_layout.html.erb that just yields, or put the content all inside of the content_for block...I have a few other ideas too. One possible benefit is that I think you could keep nesting sub-layouts pretty easily if you wanted. Here is a simplified version of this solution.

layout.html.erb <html> <head>head stuff</head> <body>   some stuff   <%= yield :sublayout %>   some stuff </body> </html>

index.html.erb <% content_for :sublayout do -%>   <%= render :partial =>"sublayout" %> <% end -%>

<% for item in @collection do -%>   <%= render :partial => "item" -%> <% end -%>

_sublayout.html.erb some stuff <%= yield %> some stuff

_item.html.erb <%= h item.name %>

2

I don't know why I though the third method worked...anyway, a little tweaking gives me this, which does work. Instead of the content_for I pass a rendered collection into _sublayout as a local variable named content.

4) layout.html.erb <html>   <head>head stuff</head>   <body>     some stuff     <%= yield %>     some stuff   </body> </html>

index.html.erb <%= render :partial =>"sublayout", :locals => { :content => (render :partial => "item", :collection => @items) } -%>

_sublayout.html.erb some stuff <%= content %> some stuff

_item.html.erb <%= h item.name %>

3

Have you checked out Ryan Bates railscasts - you might try

He also has some other ones on layouts. His railscasts are great Owen

4

I have seen his website before, but the videos don't play on my computer. Recently my computer just started having some problems with video files and I haven't taken the time to figure out the problem. Regardless I think I have pieced together something decent, kind of a cross between methods 3 and 4. The only thing that kinda still bugs me is needing a no_sublayout.html.erb. I have been trying in vain to find a why to get the the main_layout to choose between yield :sublayout or yield :layout. It looks like this...

views/layouts/main_layout.html.erb some html <%= yield :sublayout %> some html

views/items/index.html.erb render :partial => "item", :collection => @items

views/items/_item.html.erb <%= h item.name $>

views/layouts/sublayout.html.erb <% content_for sublayout do -%>   some html   <%= yield %>   some html <% end -%> render :file=>"layouts/main_layout.html.erb"

views/layouts/no_sublayout.html.erb <% content_for sublayout do -%>   <%= yield %> <% end -%> render :file=>"layouts/main_layout.html.erb"

controllers/items_controller.rb layout :choose_layout normal controller stuff private   def choose_layout     if action_name == "index" "sublayout"     else "no_sublayout"     end   end

now on to the next iteration...i am using this with nested resources and would like to keep nesting more sublayouts, hahaha. G

5

when i try to install the plugin i get removing: C:/InstantRails/ rails_apps/CHIPricebook/vendor/plugins/nested-layouts/.git and nothing gets installed