Using “ApplicationController.new.render_to_string” in a Rails api app (config.api_only = true)

I have a Rails 5 app build as an api app:

# config/application.rb
module MyApp
class Application < Rails::Application
config.api_only = true
end
end


In one of my controller actions I need to render some Ruby flavoured html, and then serve it back in the json response.

A standard Rails app do this:

# app/controllers/my_controller.rb
def my_action
html = ApplicationController.new.render_to_string("my_erb_or_haml_file", locals: {foo: "bar"}, layout: false)
render :json => {html: html}, :status => :ok
end


However, for my slimmed api app ApplicationController.new.render_to_string seems to just render " ". This confuses me, because I would expect it to either serve the content or raise an exception.

ApplicationController.new.render_to_string

" "

Any suggestions what route I should take in order to generate Ruby flavoured html?

This question has not received enough attention.

Try this maybe? evilmartians.com/chronicles/…
– Sergio Tulentsev
Jun 28 at 11:52

@SergioTulentsev seems like regardless which of the suggested lines from that post I use, it renders " ", e.g. Rails.logger.error ApplicationController.render(inline: 'erb content').inspect # => " ".
– JohnSmith1976
2 days ago

" "

Rails.logger.error ApplicationController.render(inline: 'erb content').inspect # => " "

Does this help? stackoverflow.com/questions/43911928/…
– Tarun Lalwani
yesterday

1 Answer
1

I guess you have to explicitly use base class. Your application is an API app, so your controller is probably inheriting from ActionController::API

ActionController::Base.new.render_to_string


this seems to work. I also tried the suggestion of @TarunLalwani, to inherit that particular controller from ActionController::Base. It also worked. Which solution would be considered most lightweight?
– JohnSmith1976
7 hours ago

ActionController::Base

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