Keeping a Sinatra app light: Displaying a raw array without loading ActionView

Question

I'd like to make sure that my array stays like this in the view:

["Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun", "Mon", "Tue"]

Instead of being converted to this:

[&quot;Tue&quot;, &quot;Wed&quot;, &quot;Thu&quot;, &quot;Fri&quot;, &quot;Sat&quot;, &quot;Sun&quot;, &quot;Mon&quot;, &quot;Tue&quot;]

The code in my erb file is for a highcharts graph:

categories: <%= @days %>,

In Rails, I have used the raw method:

After following advice from Messy &quot returned from Rails 3 controller to view and Use ruby array for a javascript array in erb. Escaping quotes

However, loading all of ActionView to use one method seems to defeat the object of Sinatra.

Is there a better way?

"After following advice …" is an incomplete sentence. What did you do after following the advice in those questions? — Andrew Marshall, Dec 25 '12 at 14:58
Is the array defined in the template (I'm assuming ERB) or in the route? Have you tried `["Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun", "Mon", "Tue"].inspect` ? — ian, Dec 25 '12 at 15:42
Why would you markup be escaped anyway? Sinatra doesn't do it by default. — weddingcakes, Dec 25 '12 at 14:58
I would like it to be escaped, I'm wondering what's the best method. — Richard Burton, Dec 25 '12 at 19:06

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 26 '12 at 05:32

I'm not sure why you get some escaping on the array right now, but this is what I put in an ERB view:

<% array = ["Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun", "Mon", "Tue"] %>

<p><%= array.inspect %></p>
<p><%= array.inspect.gsub(/"/, '\"') %></p>

and this was the output:

["Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun", "Mon", "Tue"]

[\"Tue\", \"Wed\", \"Thu\", \"Fri\", \"Sat\", \"Sun\", \"Mon\", \"Tue\"]

But the real question is "How do I get data from Sinatra into a javascript function?"

class App < Sinatra::Base

  get "/array", :provides => :json do
    content_type :json
    ["Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun", "Mon", "Tue"].to_json
  end

end

and then call it via some jQuery (or whichever library you would prefer) compiled from coffeescript, of course :)

$.getJSON "/array", (res) ->
  # do something with the result

Which means:

you don't need to worry about escaping
the jQuery takes care of parsing the JSON response so you've just to work with an object
it's easier to test
you've got an API set up with a web app calling against it (i.e. the Sinatra way not the Rails way)
and you'll be doing something more similar to other people which will make getting help easier.

Keeping a Sinatra app light: Displaying a raw array without loading ActionView

1 Answers1