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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T06:10:59+00:00

I have a html file has the general design (some div’s) and I need

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I have a html file has the general design (some div’s) and I need to fill this div’s with some html code Using ruby script.
any suggests?

example

I have page.html

<html>
<title>html Page</title>
<body>

<div id="main">
</div>

<div id="side">
</div>

</body>
</html>

and a ruby script inside it i collect some data and doing some kind of processing on it and i want to present it in a nice format**
so I want to set the div which it’s id=main with some html code to be like this

<html>
<title>html Page</title>
<body>

<div id="main">
<h1>you have 30 files in games folder</h1>
</div>

<div id="side">
</div>

</body>
</html>

** why i don’t use ROR? because I don’t want to build a web site I just need to build a desktop tool but it’s presentation layer is html code interpreted by browser to avoid working with graphics libraries

my problem isn’t “how can I write to this html file” I can handle it.
my problem that If I want to create a table in the html file inside main div
I will wrote the whole html code inside the ruby script to print it to the html file, is there any lib or gem that i can tell it that I want a table with 3 rows and 2 columns and it generates the html code?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I historically have used ERB and REXML for things like this, since they both ship with Ruby (removing gem dependencies). You can combine one XML file (content) with one .erb file (for layout) and get simple merging. Here’s a script I wrote for this (most of which is argument handling and extending REXML with some convenience methods):

    USAGE = <<ENDUSAGE
Usage:
   rubygen source_xml [-t template_file] [-o output_file]

   -t,--template  The ERB template file to merge (default: xml_name.erb)

   -o,--output    The output file name to write  (default: template.txt)
                  If the template_file is named "somefile_XXX.yyy",
                  the output_file will default instead to "somefile.XXX"
ENDUSAGE

ARGS = {}
UNFLAGGED_ARGS = [ :source_xml ]
next_arg = UNFLAGGED_ARGS.first
ARGV.each{ |arg|
   case arg
     when '-t','--template'
       next_arg = :template_file
     when '-o','--output'
       next_arg = :output_file
     else
       if next_arg
         ARGS[next_arg] = arg
         UNFLAGGED_ARGS.delete( next_arg )
       end
       next_arg = UNFLAGGED_ARGS.first
   end
}

if !ARGS[:source_xml]
   puts USAGE
   exit
end

extension_match = /\.[^.]+$/
template_match  = /_([^._]+)\.[^.]+$/
xml_file      = ARGS[ :source_xml   ]
template_file = ARGS[ :template_file] || xml_file.sub( extension_match, '.erb' )
output_file   = ARGS[ :output_file  ] || ( ( template_file =~ template_match ) ? template_file.sub( template_match, '.\\1' ) : template_file.sub( extension_match, '.txt' ) )

require 'rexml/document'
include REXML

class REXML::Element
  # Find all descendant nodes with a specified tag name and/or attributes
  def find_all( tag_name='*', attributes_to_match={} )
    self.each_element( ".//#{REXML::Element.xpathfor(tag_name,attributes_to_match)}" ){}
  end
  # Find all child nodes with a specified tag name and/or attributes
  def kids( tag_name='*', attributes_to_match={} )
    self.each_element( "./#{REXML::Element.xpathfor(tag_name,attributes_to_match)}" ){}
  end
  def self.xpathfor( tag_name='*', attributes_to_match={} )
    out = "#{tag_name}"
    unless attributes_to_match.empty?
      out << "["
      out << attributes_to_match.map{ |key,val|
        if val == :not_empty
          "@#{key}"
        else
          "@#{key}='#{val}'"
        end
      }.join( ' and ' )
      out << "]"
    end
    out
  end

  # A hash to tag extra data onto a node during processing
  def _mydata
    @_mydata ||= {}
  end
end

start_time = Time.new
  @xmldoc = Document.new( IO.read( xml_file ), :ignore_whitespace_nodes => :all )
  @root = @xmldoc.root
  @root = @root.first if @root.is_a?( Array )
end_time = Time.new
puts "%.2fs to parse XML file (#{xml_file})" % ( end_time - start_time )

require 'erb'
File.open( output_file, 'w' ){ |o|
  start_time = Time.new
  output_code = ERB.new( IO.read( template_file ), nil, '>', 'output' ).result( binding )
  end_time = Time.new
  puts "%.2fs to run template   (#{template_file})" % ( end_time - start_time )

  start_time = Time.new
  o << output_code
}
end_time = Time.new
puts "%.2fs to write output   (#{output_file})" % ( end_time - start_time )
puts " "

    This can be used for HTML or automated source code generation alike.

    However, these days I would advocate using Haml and Nokogiri (if you want structured XML markup) or YAML (if you want simple-to-edit content), as these will make your markup cleaner and your template logic simpler.

    Edit: Here’s a simpler file that merges YAML with Haml. The last four lines do all the work:

    #!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'yaml'; require 'haml'; require 'trollop'
EXTENSION = /\.[^.]+$/

opts = Trollop.options do
  banner "Usage:\nyamlhaml [opts] <sourcefile.yaml>"
  opt :haml,   "The Haml file to use (default: sourcefile.haml)", type:String
  opt :output, "The file to create   (default: sourcefile.html)", type:String
end
opts[:source] = ARGV.shift
Trollop.die "Please specify an input Yaml file" unless opts[:source]
Trollop.die "Could not find #{opts[:source]}"   unless File.exist?(opts[:source])

opts[:haml]   ||= opts[:source].sub( EXTENSION, '.haml' )
opts[:output] ||= opts[:source].sub( EXTENSION, '.html' )
Trollop.die "Could not find #{opts[:haml]}" unless File.exist?(opts[:haml])

@data = YAML.load(IO.read(opts[:source]))
File.open( opts[:output], 'w' ) do |output|
  output << Haml::Engine.new(IO.read(opts[:haml])).render(self)
end

    Here’s a sample YAML file:

    title: Hello World
main: "<h1>you have 30 files in games folder</h1>"
side: "I dunno, something goes here."

    …and a sample Haml file:

    !!! 5
%html
  %head
    %title= @data['title']
  %body
    #main= @data['main']
    #side= @data['side']

    …and finally the HTML they produce:

    <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Hello World</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id='main'><h1>you have 30 files in games folder</h1></div>
    <div id='side'>I dunno, something goes here.</div>
  </body>
</html>
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