Rails: Rendering a Superclass Partial

Question

I have two classes (Impressions and Replies) which inherit from the parent class Comment:

class CommentsController < ApplicationController
  . . . .
end

class ImpressionsController < CommentsController
  . . . .
end

class RepliesController < CommentsController
  . . . .
end

In my view, I want them to render the same way. Right now, I'm approaching it like this:

<%= render @comment %>

Ideally, this would render the partial "/comments/_comment", but instead Rails want to render things like "/impressions/_impression" or "/replies/_replies." Is there any way to strong arm Rails into do "/comments/_comment"?

Answer 1

With :collection you can render a collection of objects. Given a single object you should us :object instead.

<%= render partial: '/comments/comment', object: @impression %>

The :as is not necessary as long as the partial is named 'comment'. If you name your partial e.g. 'my_comment' then @impression would be accessible via the local variable 'my_comment' and you would have to use :as to define a different local name.

However in your case I would prefer to define a partial path for the Impression and Replies model as follows (Rails >3.2.?):

class Impression < ActiveRecord::Base
  ...  

  def to_partial_path
    "comments/comment"
  end
end

Then you can use the standard rendering with an object or collection

<%= render @comment %>