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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T20:59:53+00:00

I want to add a menu to my First Ever Rails Application. Nothing too

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I want to add a menu to my First Ever Rails Application. Nothing too complicated.
I’ve worked out that I should maybe reference it from application.html.erb, but after that I’m stuck.

Here’s what I’ve got so far (It’s not much)

<%= render :partial => "menu" %>

If I’m rendering a partial call “menu” in application.html.erb, where do I put the menu file, and what do I call it? Does it need to go in the controller of the view?

Can I call this partial from whichever layout subfolder I’m in?

Part II. If I want to show different content according to the view I’m in – how do I do this?

<body>
  <p>[<%= yield :menu %>]</p>
  <%= yield %>
</body>
</html>

I’m just learning Rails, so sorry about the stupid questions. Also, I’m interested in not only a solution, but also an idea of best practices.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    In basic terms you are looking for the content_for helper. You put this inside your views which will then populate named blocks in partials or layouts such as :menu. You may elect, if you wish, to use partials to actually define the content for the content_for regions.

    In a view:

    <% content_for :menu do %>
  <ul>
    <li> ... </li>
    <li> ... </li>
  </ul>
<% end %>

    or as:

    <% content_for :menu do %>
  <%= render :partial => "some_menu_content" %>
<% end %>

    In the layout or partial:

    <div id="menu">
  <%= yield :menu%>
</div>

    Watch this screencast from the Railscasts series for more information. It’s old but still applicable

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