[Nitro] Question about include files

[James Britt]

I'm trying to write abut how Nitro lets you reuse page chunks.  One way 
is to use include files:

  <render href='some_partial_thing' />

And then there'd be a file,  some_partial_thing.xhtml or 
some_partial_thing.xinc in the template path.

I had some problems getting this working right (I think there are 
ordering issues when setting Template.root and also calling mount_at for 
controllers), and noticed the messages coming from the WEBbrick server.

I *think* that you can use the <render> syntax to invoke a method|action 
on the parent controller.

I tried an experiment.   I had my index.xhtml template include


  <render href='copyright' />

And then added a 'copyright' method to the main controller, but did not 
provide a corresponding view file.

So the code is this:

   def copyright
     STDERR.puts "MainController#copyright"
     "Hey! (c)"
   end

and when i call the page I can see the STDERR message, but the string 
returned from the method never appears in the view.

What am I misunderstanding about the use of controller methods in place 
of include files?

If I change that method to use

   @out << "Hey! (c)"

then it works, but that seems a bit hackish.

I guess I'm hoping that <render> is just another way to invoke actions, 
but perhaps their place in the rendering sequence prevent this.


I also now see that this:


   def copyright
     STDERR.puts "MainController#copyright"
     @c = "Hey! (c)"
   end

will work fine when I have copyright.xhtml in the template path.

But I can't seem to get the raw return value of the method to render.

(BTW, after my code change to how "mount_at" works, I see that I can 
have multiple template paths for a controller by calling mount_at 
multiple times.  I believe this is the intended behavior, based on the 
comments in include.rb and it referring to Nitro searching the 
"template_root stack" if the included file is referenced with a relative 
path.  Is this correct?)


-- 
James Britt

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion 
of knowledge."
  - D. Boorstin