Question

I use PHP to generate files of some special format, and I have decided to try the same thing with Ruby. To make a file with PHP, I use the following code:

<? include 'functions_and_settings.php'; ob_start() ?>

some parts of another format

<? // php functions generating file content, 
   // including other formatted files ?>

some parts

<? file_put_contents('output.fmt', ob_get_clean()) ?>

Is it possible to do with Ruby? How would you do this?

---

Update

The following code is equivalent to the PHP one:

require 'erb'
require 'my_functions_and_settings'
template = ERB.new <<-EOF

some text lines of another format

<% #functions generating content,
   # inclusion of formatted files %>

some text lines of another format

EOF
File.open("output.fmt", "w") do |f|
  f.puts template.result(binding)
end
# or may be:  File.new("file.txt") << template.result(binding)

Is there a way to do ruby file.erb >> output.fmt?

---

Update2

Standard Ruby distribution has erb processor

/usr/bin/erb  my_formatted_file.erb

Answer 1

There are several ways to do this but the most common is probably erb. This allows you to provide a template and then embed ruby command within <% %> symbols. In much the same way as you do with PHP. This is how most Ruby-On-Rails applications render their views.

There is a short review of 19 different ruby templating engines (Some of which are XML/HTML specific) available here