[Rails] Is it a good idea to avoid ERB usage, when it seems useless.

Ruby on Rails Tuesday, June 26, 2018

I like ruby and I don't really link ERB templates ...

Why ?

Because when you write ruby:

1 - It's hard to generate malformed HTML (or others output languages) because you use methods that generate the code for you.

With ERB: template.html.erb

<div class="key-value">
  <span class="key"><%= key %></span>
  <span class="value"><%= value %></span>
</div>

Here I can forget to close the <div> and generate malformed HTML.

With pure ruby and ActionView methods:

<%=
content_tag(:div, class: "key-value"){
  concat content_tag(:span, class: "key"){ key }
  concat content_tag(:span, class: "value"){ value }
}
%>

Here I cannot do this mistake.

2 - Rubocop can check the code to make it more tidy. (https://github.com/rubocop-hq/rubocop)

Perhaps I am wrong but it seems that Rubocop does not support ERB.

3 - It is ruby so code coverage should work on it (code coverage does not work on Rails views but it is another big issue, for me).

4 - The code can be easily moved to helper or presenter (copy / past).

How ?

If you want to use it, by default, you have to name your views with suffix .ruby

Then, by adding an initializer like config/initializers/ruby_views.rb

ActionView::Template.register_template_handler(:rb, :source.to_proc)

You can name them with suffix .rb and Rubocop will automatically check them :)

Using this the code above can be write as : template.html.rb

content_tag(:div, class: "key-value"){
  concat content_tag(:span, class: "key"){ key }
  concat content_tag(:span, class: "value"){ value }
}

Questions

Why do we (Rails coders) write views as templates using ERB ... ?

Is it a go idea to write views using pure ruby ?

Best regards,

David

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