---
title: she's a beauty
teaser:
tags: web,rails
author: Jared Carroll
published_on: 2007-06-08
---

Recently I was writing an action in one of my controllers that needed to do a
POST to a remote <abbr title="Application Programming Interface">API</abbr>.

One of the parameters in that POST was a block of <abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr>.

The first pass was similar to this (ignoring execption handling for the remote
call for now):

```ruby
class UsersController < ApplicationController

  def create
    @user = User.new params[:user]
    if @user.save
      markup =<<-EOS
        <h2>John Pepper</h2>
        Makes amazing [burritos.](http://www.boloco.com)
        Is in touch with the blogosphere.
      EOS
      RemoteApi.update_profile :markup => markup
      redirect_to user_path(@user)
    else
      render :action => :new
    end
  end

end
```

I don't like that <abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> in my
controller.  Plus that `<a>` tag is terrible, I want to use `#link_to` but
that's not available in controllers (and it shouldnt' be).

Second pass:

```ruby
class UsersController < ApplicationController

  def create
    @user = User.new params[:user]
    if @user.save
      RemoteApi.update_profile
        :markup => render(:partial => 'user')
      redirect_to user_path(@user)
    else
      render :action => :new
    end
  end

end
```

In `user.rhtml`:

```erb
<h2>John Pepper</h2>
Makes amazing <%= link_to 'burritos', 'http://www.boloco.com' %>.
Is in touch with the blogosphere.
```

That's better.  I got the <abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr>
out of the controller and I can use #link_to instead of an `<a>` tag.

But wait: `ActionController::DoubleRenderError`.  You can't call render and/or
redirect multiple times in an action (as a side, whoever wrote
`ActionController::DoubleRenderError` is awesome - that is the best error
message of any Rails exception).

After looking through the docs i found
`ActionController::Base#render_to_string`.  This beauty is the same as #render
but does not actually send the result as the response body i.e. it doesn't count
as a #render call in an action, allowing you to avoid the
`ActionController::DoubleRenderError`.

Third pass:

```ruby
class UsersController < ApplicationController

  def create
    @user = User.new params[:user]
    if @user.save
      RemoteApi.update_profile
        :markup => render_to_string(:partial => 'user')
      redirect_to user_path(@user)
    else
      render :action => :new
    end
  end
```

In `user.rhtml`:

```erb
<h2>John Pepper</h2>
Makes amazing <%= link_to 'burritos', 'http://www.boloco.com' %>.
Is in touch with the blogosphere.
```

Sweet.  Exactly what I wanted.

Someone else here at t-bot recommended using this strategy for flash messages.
Since flash messages are just text, whenever they get more complicated than 1
sentence it might be good to put them in a partial to keep all that view code
out of your controller, `#render_to_string` would allow you to do that.