Having just discovered the magic of using partials to refactor html in rails, imagine my delight when I found it to be even easier in Sinatra.
A partial is a just a fragment of html (or erb). They can be used for rendering duplicate or dynamic content into otherwise static pages.
I was writing html for my JSGames sinatra application when I caught myself copying a snippet of html onto my clipboard. Why on earth would I duplicate code? I want to include a block of text on both the index and the game page, but I don’t want to have to modify it in two places when I inevitably get around to rewriting it.
The solution?
Factor out the duplicate html into a partial (begin name with _ for identification purposes). For example _gameDescription.erb
<h1>Game Title</h1>
<p>Game description</p>Add that partial wherever you want to display this snippet of code:
<%= erb :_gameDescription %>For example:
<div class="span4 pagination-centered">
<%= erb :_solitaireDesc %>
<a href="/game" class="btn btn-large">Play</a>
</div>Check out the final product on JSGames.
Awesome