Rails View Helper Methods in controller

Do you want to use view helper_method in your controller to achieve some desired output. Rails provides a lot of view helpers, for example link_to, mail_to, pluralize, etc. One way to archive this in Rails 3 is to call view_context inside the controller to create a new ActionView instance for a controller, then all helper methods will be available through this instance in the controller.

# app/controllers/posts_controller.rb

class PostsController < ActionController::Base

  def show

    # ...

    tags = view_context.generate_tags(@post)

    email_link = view_context.mail_to(@user.email)

    # ...

  end 

end

# app/helpers/posts_helper.rb

module PostsHelper

  def generate_tags(post)

    "Generate Tags"

  end

end