Using #inline_html with a Rails view context

[ajb]

So I'm converting some Erector code to Fortitude. Outside of a normal ActionView context (say, in a model,) we've got a method that looks like this:

def to_table_cell(attachment_ids)
  Erector.inline do
    Attachment.find(attachment_ids).each do |attachment|
      a attachment.upload.raw_filename,
        href: download_attachment_path(attachment),
        target: '_blank'
    end
  end.to_html
end  # => "<a href="/attachment/12/download" target="_blank">myfile.jpg</a>"

I've noticed that Fortitude has an inline_html method, to which you can pass a block. However, it appears that since we're outside of the ActionView context, we don't have access to the download_attachment_path helper that Rails provides.

@ageweke: I've kept up a bit with the recent issue comments about rendering context... but I'm unsure if there's a way you'd recommend to implement this.

It looks like I could probably create an instance of ActionView::Base and somehow use it as my rendering context. I could probably package it up in a nice little method that would be easy to call in the future. But I feel like I'm probably doing something wrong here...

[ageweke]

Hmmm. This is a really difficult problem. While I’ve seen Rails people say “don’t do that in a model!”, I’ve wanted to do exactly the same kind of thing, for the same reason. (It’d be one thing to render a whole wad of HTML in a model, but a list of links is another thing…)

You’re exactly right about the reasons why there is no download_attachment_path helper there. Perhaps take a look at my latest reply (posted just now) to #34: it gives a tiny bit of code that’ll let you supply Fortitude with a helpers object that will give your widget access to whatever helpers you want — assuming you mix in the module (here, some module I know you can get access to that has all of your routes helpers in it).

It strikes me, looking at it, that Fortitude’s inline_html doesn’t let you pass in a RenderingContext for its internal call to to_html. I’ll try to add that, and keep this bug open for that. In the mean time, you can just call SomeWidgetClass.inline_subclass { … }.new(assigns).to_html(my_rendering_context), which does exactly the same thing.

[ageweke]

In 0.9.5, which I just released, #inline_html can take a second argument, a Fortitude::RenderingContext. While it’s impossible for Fortitude to magically make the case above “just work”, for the reasons referenced in here, this should make it about as easy as is possible.