Set Rails value over multiple lines?

Question

In Rails, you can create an anchor tag that spans multiple lines doing something like the following:

<% link_to target_url_path do %>
    <span class="title">Example</span>
    <span class="excerpt">Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum...</span>
    <%= image_tag 'example.png', :class => 'thumbnail' %>
<% end >

I'm wondering how I can set a value using a similar approach. In essence, something like:

<% my_variable = do %>
    <span class="title">Example</span>
    <span class="excerpt">Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum...</span>
    <%= image_tag 'example.png', :class => 'thumbnail' %>
<% end >

Edit: in case anyone is curious why I'm asking, it's because facebox_link_to doesn't appear to allow you to use the do syntax like link_to does.

Answer 1

This is effectively rendering an inline template. You can use render :inline for this:

<% my_variable = render :inline => <<-EOS
<span class="title">Example</span>
<span class="excerpt">Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum...</span>
#{image_tag 'example.png', :class => 'thumbnail'}
EOS
%>

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

I don't really know what you want to do, however you can use the #tap pattern.

<% my_variable.tap do |variable| %>
  <span class="title">Example</span>
  <span class="excerpt">Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum...</span>
  <%= image_tag 'example.png', :class => 'thumbnail' %>
<% end %>

If instead you want to assign a chunk of code to a variable, then you are doing it wrong because views shouldn't set variables in that way.

Instead, use an helper.