Assigning jBuilder output to a variable

Question

I have a Ruby on Rails App that uses jbuilder. I am using jbuilder to help render json responses. Is there a way assign the jbuilder partial to a variable without rendering the result? I have been trying to do something like below, but I am getting this undefined method 'key' for nil:NilClass error. It seems I am not correctly passing the users model to the user.json.jbuilder Can anyone offer any help?

context = ActionController::Base.new.view_context
user_json = JbuilderTemplate.new(context) do |json|
 json.partial! "/users_api/user.json.jbuilder", user: user
end.target!

Answer 1

You can return the JSON from Jbuilder directly with JbuilderTemplate combined with .target!, but the filename is required to start with an underscore. Starting the filename with and underscore denotes it as a partial which means it can't be rendered directly.

References (How to render Jbuidler partials inside a model?, Missing partial in rails)

Return JSON directly (calls _user.json.jbuilder)

    context = ActionController::Base.new.view_context
    user_json = JbuilderTemplate.new(context) do |json|
      json.partial! "/users_api/user.json.jbuilder", user: user
    end.target!

Render JSON (calls user.json.jbuilder which call _user.json.jbuilder)

    render "/users_api/user.json.jbuilder"

user.json.jbuilder

    json.partial! "/users_api/user.json.jbuilder", user: @user

_user.json.jbuilder

    json.email user.email
    json.name user.name