render_to_string stripping markup

Question

I am using render_to_string within a JSON 'render' response. The render_to_string method seems to be striping my HTML, what am I doing wrong here?

Here's a sample:

render :json => {:html => render_to_string(:partial => 'view', :locals => { data => @data} )}

The response is coming through without any markup on it.

Answer 1

Have you tried setting the template format in the respond_to block like this:

format.json do
  @template.template_format = :html
  @html = render_to_string( :partial => 'view', :locals => { data => @data}  )
  render :json => { :success => true, :html => @html }
end

Answer 2

OK, this is such a hack, but if I CGI.escape the render_to_string I can unescape and load in the HTML client-side. I think the issue here is that I'm not telling Rails to render HTML in the first place. In fact, I am using render :text since render :json will cause the browser to treat the file like a download since the Ajax Upload library isn't even using Ajax, rather it uses a form of iframe trickery.