If you’ve spent much time working with Ruby on Rails and more especially if you’ve done anything with json you might have run across errors like this:
ActionView::MissingTemplate Exception: Missing template users/_user.erb </pre>I was having this problem and doing a lot of cursing which is common when I stay up and write code until 2am which I know I should do and I also know that I shouldn't write really long run on sentences but I do it anyway. This error is usually the result of some code that looks like this:format.json do @user_html = render_to_string( :partial => 'users/user', :object => @user ) render :json => { :success => true, :user_html => @user_html } end </pre>The cause of this error is that the format of the current request is :json. There isn't an _user.json.erb template so Rails tries to find an _user.erb file. That doesn't exist either and boom you spend the night sounding like a sailor. Now I don't pretend to be an expert but I have been accused of being a hack. I solve the problem by changing the template format:format.json do @template.template_format = :html @user_html = render_to_string( :partial => 'users/user', :object => @user ) render :json => { :success => true, :user_html => @user_html } end </pre>The key is the addition of:@template.template_format = :html </pre>Don't yell at me if it breaks. I'm open to better suggestions but for now this does work and now my I can find other reasons to stay up late.