Render a JBuilder view in html view

Question

I've created a json view with JBuilder. But I want to preload this into a data object, so Backbone has access to the data early on without fetching for it.

How can I render the list.json.jbuilder view into my list.html.erb view?

Normally without jbuilder, I'd do something like this:

<div data-list="<%= @contents.to_json %>"></div>

Answer 1

render, when called from within a view, returns a string rendering of the passed template or partial; you can embed that string into your view as you like. Note though that:

• You have to append your template name with the type suffix/extension. If you don't, Rails may get confused about which template file you're calling; ie: it might choose list.html.erb instead of list.json.jbuilder. If you're making this call from list.html.erb, trying to render list.html.erb results in infinite recursion and a SystemStackError. Using the :format option for render doesn't appear to work.
• You have to specify the qualified path to the template; it won't find the right template for "list.json" just because list.json.jbuilder resides in the same directory as list.html.erb.
• You need to pass the output of the render call through raw; otherwise, it will get escaped when it gets embedded into the view.

So, for your example, you might write this, assuming your templates were in /app/views/foo:

<div data-list="<%= raw render(:template => "foo/list.json", :locals => { :contents => @contents }) %>"></div>