Another approach to using helper methods in your controller actions in Ruby on Rails

	#
	# If you want to use helper methods inside your controller's actions
	# (even though it is arguably a code smell, ie you should push your
	# presentation logic down into views rather than have it in your
	# controllers), you can include the helper modules you want, for
	# example:
	#
	# class ThingController < ActionController::Base
	# include ApplicationHelper
	# include ThingHelper
	# ...
	# end
	#
	# But this will pollute your controller with all the methods from the
	# helpers which might be undesirable.
	#
	# There are various workarounds for this, such as:
	# * http://www.johnyerhot.com/2008/01/10/rails-using-helpers-in-you-controller/
	# * http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/1799
	# * http://masonoise.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/using-rails-tag-helpers-in-a-controller/
	#
	# You can also access any helper from a controller action using something like
	# this:
	#
	# ActionController::Base.helpers.some_helper
	# ThingController.helpers.some_helper
	#
	# or even this (?)
	#
	# self.class.helpers.other_helper
	#
	# but that fairly inconvenient and awkward looking, so let's make it nicer.
	#
	# This defines the use_helper_method which can be used as follows:
	#
	# class ThingController < ActionController::Base
	# use_helper_method :some_helper, :other_helper
	# ...
	# def some_action
	# ...
	# @message = "Hello #{some_helper(@thing)}\n\nRegards #{other_helper(@user)}"
	# end
	# end
	#
	# It will create a private method in your controller that just calls
	# the helpers you specified. Now you can call some_helper and pluralize
	# directly from your action methods.
	#
	# (Not to be confused with ActionController::Base.helper_method and
	# ActionController::Base.helper which do very different things...)
	#
	# Note: This is kind of experimental. There might be a better way to
	# do it.
	#
	class ActionController::Base
	def self.use_helper_method(*syms)
	syms.each do |helper_method|
	class_eval <<-EOM
	private
	def #{helper_method}(*args)
	self.class.helpers.#{helper_method}(*args)
	end
	EOM
	end
	end
	end

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