How Do You Pass a Method to gsub in Ruby?

I am building off of Ben's static site generator, and I wanted to DRY it up a bit.

One thing led to another and I built my own static site generator today

Ben Halpern ・ May 3 '20

#webdev #javascript #ruby #html

I have a few methods:

prod_build = ARGV[0] = "production_build"

# Read files

def page_partials(new_page_partial)
  pages = "site/#{page_partial}.html"
  new_page_partial = File.open(pages).read
end

def script_partials(new_script_partial)
  scripts = "site/#{script_partial}.js"
  new_script_partial = File.open(scripts).read
end

def style_partial(new_style_partial)
  styles = "site/#{style_partial}.css"
  new_style_partial(styles).read
end

puts page_partials()

I'm not a Rubyist, though I've dabbled in it. I assume these methods are correct, considering:

build_string = base_html
  # How do you use a block in a .gsub method???
  .gsub("{{ head }}" {page_partials})
  .gsub("{{ seo }}", seo_html)
  .gsub("{{ main }}", main_css)
  .gsub("{{ dev }}", dev_html)

I have a bunch of .gsub methods that expect a file, will change the file name, and in the build string, will create the file.

What I want to know is, as a JavaScript dev, how to pass these methods as parameters to the .gsub method in a block and if you can do this.

Shifting paradigms

I haven't looked at this code in a month as I was sick for that long. I have no idea what I was aiming for as such I am a little lost. JavaScript handles things much differently and I am trying to apply my js knowledge to Ruby and that seems to be a bad idea.

Thanks for helping, if you can.

Comments

[Jonathan Yeong]

Hey Tiffany! If I understand your question correctly, you're trying to call page_partials and substitute the text {{ head }} with the value of page_partials.

If that's the case. You should be able to call that method directly in the gsub. Like so:

# Where new_page_partial is the file name of whatever page partial you want to pass in.
base_html.gsub("{{ head }}", page_partials(new_page_partial))

It does look like your page_partials function might have a small bug. Here are my comments for it:

def page_partials(new_page_partial)
  # bug: page_partial isn't being referenced anywhere. You may want to use new_page_partial instead.
  pages = "site/#{page_partial}.html"
  new_page_partial = File.open(pages).read
end

Hopefully this helps! I'm happy to pair on any Ruby code!

[tiff]

Hey! Yeah we should definitely link up as I'm struggling with it a bit. It's pretty late on the East Coast, but I'll DM you on Twitter tomorrow if that's okay?

[Jonathan Yeong]

Yeah for sure!