What's the simplest way to use mustache view templates in rails?

Question

I could do:

render :text => Mustache.render(view_template_in_a_string, object_hash)

in my controller, but it seems more conventional to put view_template_in_a_string in it's own viewname.mustache.html file under views/controllername/action.mustache.html like I would with action.html.erb

currently I use

gem 'mustache'

for my mustache needs

How can I use mustache views like I would with erb

---

I understand that mustache is logic-less, I don't need logic in my views

---

my current hack:

# controllers/thing_controller.rb
def some_action
    hash = {:name => 'a name!!'}
    vw = File.read('./app/views/'+params[:controller]+'/'+params[:action]+'.html.mustache') || ""
    render :text => Mustache.render(vw, hash), :layout => true
end

Answer 1

An updated answer since the original solution, mustache-rails, ceases to exist.

The gem is:

https://github.com/agoragames/stache

And a redundant but simple example to address how to use stache in our rails project, we'll make the beginning of a Noises Demo App.

To start we'll add both the mustache and the stache gem into our Gemfile and run bundle install.

Then in our config/application.rb we need to tell stache to use mustache (the other available option is handlebars; also, this and other configuration options can be found on their github page).

Stache.configure do |config|
  config.use :mustache
end

Here's the sample directory structure with a few example files for our app:

app/
  controllers/
    noises_controller.rb
    models/
      noise.rb
  templates/ 
    noises/
      animal.mustache
  views/ 
    noises/
      animal.rb 

In controllers/noises_controller.rb

class NoisesController < ApplicationController
  def animal
  end
end

In models/noise.rb

class Noise < ActiveRecord::Base 
  def self.dog 
    "ar roof"
  end

  def self.sheep 
    "baa"
  end 

  def self.bullfrog 
    "borborygmus"
  end 
end

In templates/noises/animal.mustache

<p>This is what a dog sounds like: {{ dog }}</p>
<p>This is what a sheep sounds like: {{ sheep }}</p>
<p>And bullfrogs can sound like: {{ bullfrog }}</p>

In views/noises/animal.rb

module Noises 
  class Animal < Stache::Mustache::View 
    def dog 
      Noise.dog
    end 

    def sheep 
      Noise.sheep 
    end 

    def bullfrog 
      Noise.bullfrog 
    end 
  end
end

Hopefully this clarifies an example of how someone can use stache and mustache in a rails application to serve the correct view templates.

Answer 2

Just use this gem:

https://github.com/josh/mustache-rails

That way you can easily configure your rails application to serve the correct view templates, so that you no longer need your hack.