Partials with Locals

Objectives

1. Use the locals keyword

2. Understand why using instance variables in partials is non-optimal

3. Use a partial while rendering a collection

4. Use a partial from another controller with a local

Introduction

Partials help us break our code up into reusable chunks. They also often have implicit dependencies that can lead to bugs. For example, what if a partial assumes that a @user variable is present. If the point is to reuse partials, if you put it inside of an action that didn't set a @user variable, you're going to have a bug. Using "locals" in partials is how we can make these implicit assumptions explicit. In the following example, we'll unpack exactly what locals are and how they're used.

Lesson

Take a look at the included repo. You should notice the same piece of view code in a few places.

<ul>
  <li> <%= @author.name %></li>
  <li> <%= @author.hometown %></li>
</ul>

You'll find that code (or very similar code) in the following pages:

• app/views/authors/show.html.erb

• app/views/authors/index.html.erb

• app/views/posts/show.html.erb.

• app/views/posts/index.html.erb.

Let's see how we might be vulnerable to bugs. In this <ul> we assume that there will be a controller-set variable, @author. But what if that person-like entity makes more sense to be called @admin or @guest or @owner. We want the same bit of UI, but don't want to have to re-name our variables to make it work. We know what we want in the partial (the <ul>), what we want to be flexible is the "thing" that we invoke .name and hometown on.

ASIDE: This should recall the "why do methods have arguments and parameters" discussion from when you were learning to write methods.

Let's start with the author show page. Watch our process here as we're going to apply it to all views that reference this name and hometown information.

Let's remove the code from our app/views/authors/show.html.erb page. Now our file should be empty:

<!-- app/views/authors/show.html.erb -->

We can move the removed code into a partial, app/views/authors/_author.html.erb, that now has the following code:

<!-- app/views/authors/_author.html.erb -->

<ul>
  <li> <%= @author.name %></li>
  <li> <%= @author.hometown %></li>
</ul>

To keep our code in the show page rendering out the same content, we call the partial from the app/views/authors/show.html.erb file. Doing this, the app/views/authors/show.html.erb file now looks like the following:

Great!

Now let's take a look at the app/views/posts/show.html.erb file. It currently looks like the following:

Information About the Post
<ul>
  <li> <%= @author.name %></li>
  <li> <%= @author.hometown %></li>
</ul>
<%= @post.title %>
<%= @post.content %>

You can see that lines 2-5 are exactly the same as the code in our authors/author partial. Let's remove the repetition in our codebase by using that partial instead. By using the partial, our code will look like the following:

Information About the Post
<%= render 'authors/author' %>
<%= @post.title %>
<%= @post.content %>

NOTE: Because we are calling a partial from outside the current app/views/posts folder, we must specify the folder that our author partial is coming from by calling render 'authors/author'.

The Problem

In app/views/authors/show.html.erb our source of information about .name and .hometown is @author; in app/views/posts/show.html.erb the source of information about .name and .hometown is @post.author. If we could tell the partial "use as your source" @author or @post.author, we could share the partial across these two different views.

The locals parameter to render provides this flexibility.

Let's see how local variables make our code more explicit.

This is what the entire show view, app/views/posts/show.html.erb, looks like when locals are used:

Information About the Post
<%= render partial: "authors/author", locals: {post_author: @author} %>
<%= @post.title %>
<%= @post.content %>

Notice a few things:

1. We are no longer passing the render method a String; we're passing key-value pairs

2. The first key-value pair tells Rails the name of the partial to render ("authors/author")

3. The second key-value pair specifies the locals as a Hash. That Hash's keys (post_author here) will be created as local variables within the partial.

When we use locals, we need to make sure that the variables we refer to in our partial have the same names as the keys in our locals hash.

In our example partial, app/views/author/_author.html.erb, we need to change our code from:

<ul>
  <li> <%= @author.name %></li>
  <li> <%= @author.hometown %></li>
</ul>

to:

<ul>
  <li> <%= post_author.name %></li>
  <li> <%= post_author.hometown %></li>
</ul>

The way we use locals with a partial is similar to how we pass arguments into a method. In the locals Hash, the post_author: key is the argument name, and the value of that argument, @author, is the value stored as post_author and passed into the method. We can name the keys whatever we want.

Now notice that, if we choose to delete the line <%= render {partial: "authors/author", locals: {post_author: @author}} %> from the posts/show view, calling the partial requires us to pass in data about the author. The @author = @post.author line in our PostsController may no longer be needed.

In fact, with locals, we can completely eliminate the @author = @post.author line in the posts#show controller action, instead only accessing that data where we need it, in the partial.

Let's remove that line of code in our controller and in the view pass through the author information by changing our code to the following:

app/controllers/posts_controller:

  ...
  def show
    @post = Post.find(params[:id])
  end

app/views/posts/show.html.erb:

Information About the Post
<%= render partial: "authors/author", locals: {post_author: @post.author} %>
<%= @post.title %>
<%= @post.content %>

This code is much better. We are being more explicit about our dependencies, reducing lines of code in our codebase, and reducing the scope of the author variable.

Don't worry if you find the syntax for rendering a partial hard to remember –– it is. You can always reference this guide or the Rails Guides.

Conclusion

In this lab we've learned how partials help us DRY out our views and how the locals Hash can be used to create flexibility in our calls to the partials.

Resources

• RailsGuide: Partials

Clone https://github.com/learn-co-curriculum/partial-locals-reading