Ruby on Rails Generating Views

Question

Is there a way to generate the views separately using the rails generate command? I would also be willing to install a gem to accomplish that task f one exists. Basically the sc

Answer 1

As previously mentioned by sameers there was post that showed how to just generate a the views. It will create all the views for your model using the rails default templates which is very handy.

If like me you want something a little more customizable you can achieve the following.

You can create your own generator so you have something like this.

rails generate view NAME VIEW [options]

To achieve this you need to do the following.

rails generate generator view

This will generate a few files for you in lib/generators/view/ folder.

Open the view_generator.rb file and add the following code.

class ViewGenerator < Rails::Generators::Base
  source_root File.expand_path('templates', __dir__)
  argument :name, type: :string
  argument :action, type: :string

  def generate_view
    template "#{file_name}.html.erb", "app/views/#{folder_name}/#{file_name}.html.erb"
  end

  private

  def folder_name
    name.underscore
  end

  def file_name
    action.underscore
  end

  def type
    name.titleize.singularize
  end

  def down_type
    name.downcase.singularize
  end

  def render_form
    "<%= render 'form', #{down_type}: @#{down_type} %>"
  end

  def render_link_back
    "<%= link_to 'Back', #{folder_name}_path %>"
  end
end

Next you need to create the file that we are using actual template used in generate_view method.

Using the action new as example, create a filelib/generators/view/new.html.erb and add the following.

New <%= type %>

<%= render_form %>

<%= render_link_back %>

Customize the template view as much as you want. You will need to add the _form.html.erb as well. Add any additional variables and logic in your view_generator.rb file and you are done.

It's more work but can be worth it if you find yourself generating similar views all the time.

Best use case I can think of for this approach is if you white label your platform and need to generate multiple files for a clients profile.