Rails - How to use a Helper Inside a Controller

While I realize you are supposed to use a helper inside a view, I need a helper in my controller as I'm building a JSON object to return.

It goes a little like this:

def xxxxx

   @comments = Array.new

   @c_comments.each do |comment|
   @comments << {
     :id => comment.id,
     :content => html_format(comment.content)
   }
   end

   render :json => @comments
end

How can I access my html_format helper?

Solution 1:

You can use

• helpers.<helper> in Rails 5+ (or ActionController::Base.helpers.<helper>)
• view_context.<helper> (Rails 4 & 3) (WARNING: this instantiates a new view instance per call)
• @template.<helper> (Rails 2)
• include helper in a singleton class and then singleton.helper
• include the helper in the controller (WARNING: will make all helper methods into controller actions)

Solution 2:

Note: This was written and accepted back in the Rails 2 days; nowadays grosser's answer is the way to go.

Option 1: Probably the simplest way is to include your helper module in your controller:

class MyController < ApplicationController
  include MyHelper

  def xxxx
    @comments = []
    Comment.find_each do |comment|
      @comments << {:id => comment.id, :html => html_format(comment.content)}
    end
  end
end

Option 2: Or you can declare the helper method as a class function, and use it like so:

MyHelper.html_format(comment.content)

If you want to be able to use it as both an instance function and a class function, you can declare both versions in your helper:

module MyHelper
  def self.html_format(str)
    process(str)
  end

  def html_format(str)
    MyHelper.html_format(str)
  end
end

Hope this helps!

Solution 3:

In Rails 5 use the helpers.helper_function in your controller.

Example:

def update
  # ...
  redirect_to root_url, notice: "Updated #{helpers.pluralize(count, 'record')}"
end

Source: From a comment by @Markus on a different answer. I felt his answer deserved it's own answer since it's the cleanest and easier solution.

Reference: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/24866

Solution 4:

My problem resolved with Option 1. Probably the simplest way is to include your helper module in your controller:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  include ApplicationHelper

...