How to change the default path of view files in a Rails 3 controller?

Question

I have a controller called ProjectsController. Its actions, by default, look for views inside app/views/projects. I'd like to change that path for all methods (index, show, new, edit etc...) in the controller.

For example:

class ProjectsController < ApplicationController

  #I'd like to be able to do something like this
  views_path 'views/mycustomfolder'

  def index
    #some code
  end

  def show
    #some code
  end

  def new
    #some code
  end

  def edit
    #some code
  end
end

Please note I am not changing each method with render but defining a default path for all of them. Is this possible? If so, how?

Thank you!

Solution 1

If there's no built-in method for this, perhaps you can override render for that controller?

class MyController < ApplicationController
  # actions ..

  private

  def render(*args)
    options = args.extract_options!
    options[:template] = "/mycustomfolder/#{params[:action]}"
    super(*(args << options))
  end
end

Not sure how well this works out in practice, or if it works at all.

Solution 2

See ActionView::ViewPaths::ClassMethods#prepend_view_path.

class ProjectsController < ApplicationController
    prepend_view_path 'app/views/mycustomfolder'
    ...

Solution 3

You can do this inside your controller:

  def self.controller_path
    "mycustomfolder"
  end

Solution 4

You can add something like:

paths.app.views << "app/views/myspecialdir"

in the config/application.rb file to have rails look in another directory for view templates. The one caveat is that it'll still look for view files that match the controller. So if you have a controller named HomeController with the above config for the views it'll look for something named "app/views/myspecialdir/home/index.html.erb" to render.

Solution 5

If you want to change the default path for all your views at app level, you could do something like following -

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_action :set_views

  private

  def set_views
    prepend_view_path "#{Rails.root.join('app', 'views', 'new_views')}"
  end
end

And write all your views in the folder new_views following the same directory structure as original.

P.S. - This answer is inspired from @mmell's answer.

View more solutions

Comments

[Yuval Karmi]

this seems intuitive, but it actually results in the following error: 'undefined local variable or method `paths' for ApplicationController:Class' - any ideas?

[Yuval Karmi]

this actually works perfectly, with the exception that the action variable does not exist. However, that was not relevant for needs (i just needed to prepend a folder to the path). thank you very much!

[Mike Gorski]

What version of rails are you using? I've tried this in rails 3.0.x adding this line within the class Application < Rails::Application block in the config/application.rb with no issues.

[Bushra Khan]

For the record, I assume path.app.views.unshift("views/myspecialdir") would work. I.e. add your own special entry to the beginning of the array instead of appending at the end. Rails probably looks up matches from the beginning of the array.

[Ross]

That will look for views in 'app/views/mycustomfolder/projects/'

[Matt Smith]

prepend_view_path is much cleaner solution.

[dvdplm]

Splendid, works perfectly and is imo by far the best solution to this problem.

[Sarah Vessels]

Doing this works, but makes my RSpec controller tests not use the right controller unless I specify use_route, which is now deprecated in Rails 4.

[makhan]

The above didn't work for me but this did: paths['app/views'] << "app/views/myspecialdir"

[prikha]

Works but wrecks controller spec

[Ten Bitcomb]

Does anyone know if the problem with controller specs is a failing of this code or a failing of the way that controller specs work? I don't know how to answer that question, but I would think that doing this should always work regardless of how a controller is being used. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Nik So]

how about namespaced controllers? if I had a api/v3/todos_controller.rb, it will try to look up templates at app/view/mycustomfolder/api/v3/todos/show.json.rabl instead of app/view/mycustomfolder/todos/show.json.rabl

[Dimitrios Mistriotis]

Current location: edgeapi.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/… (Suggested edit queue is full)