Question

I’m trying to learn Rails better by looking at example applications, and while looking at this line of the source of railscasts.com, I noticed it does this:

<div class="episodes">
    <%= render @episodes %>
  </div>

What exactly is going on here? Why isn’t this documented on the render function? Or is it?

Answer 1

This is shorthand for

render :partial => "episode", :collection => @episodes

The form above is documented in the Rails API docs under render (ActionController::Base). The shorthand form is not documented as far as I can see except in the Rails Guides.