How do I render a partial from the Rails console?

Question

I'm using Rails 4.0.3. How do I render a partial from the Rails console?

Answer 1

Try this (in the console):

# initial setup
view_paths = Rails::Application::Configuration.new(Rails.root).paths["app/views"]
av_helper = ActionView::Base.new view_paths

# (Optional) include this if your partial uses route helpers:
include Rails.application.routes.url_helpers

av_helper.render "path/to/your/partial"

Also, for templates:

av_helper.render :template => "path/to/your/template"

Update: The OP reported the partial rendering line did not work, and generated an error. I didn't encounter that, but if others do, this is the version the OP indicated was successful:

av_helper.render :partial => 'tags/tag', :collection => Tag.limit(3)

As Josh Diehl pointed out, you can also use the usual options like locals in the render. I would expect you should be able to use all the usual render options normally used in controllers and views.

Josh's example:

av_helper.render(partial: "tags/tag", locals: {term: term})

Answer 2

There is an official way to do this in Rails 5 (cf this pull request):

ApplicationController.render 'templates/name'

The developer also made a gem to support this in Rails 4: backport_new_renderer