Attaching AXLSX view to mail Rails Mailer

Question

According to the GitHub Page for the axlsx gem I should use this syntax to render a xlsx view to a file and attach it:

xlsx = render_to_string handlers: [:axlsx], formats: [:xlsx], template: "users/export", locals: {users: users}
attachments["Users.xlsx"] = {mime_type: Mime::XLSX, content: xlsx}

Here is my mail method:

xlsx = render_to_string(handlers: [:axlsx], formats: [:xlsx], template: 'v1/reports/reportxyz', params: {start_date: '2016-09-12', period: 'weekly'})
attachments["report.xlsx"] = {content: xlsx, mime_type: Mime::XLSX}
mail(to: "my@email.address", subject: "Report", format: "text")

However I get this error when I try and call the mailer method:

ActionView::MissingTemplate: Missing template layouts/mailer with {:locale=>[:en], :formats=>[:xlsx], :variants=>[], :handlers=>[:axlsx]}. Searched in:
  * "path/to/project/app/views"

Why is the render_to_string method affecting what the mailer view the mailer is trying to render? locgially I don't have a mailer.xlsx.axlsx file in my app/views/layouts folder but rather the mailer.text.erb I am trying to use as with other emails.

EDIT

I changed the render line to xlsx = render_to_string(template: 'v1/reports/azamara_social', params: {start_date: '2016-09-12', period: 'weekly'})

And now it seems to try and render the xlsx view but of course gets nil:NilClass errors when the xlsx view tries to reference instance variables defined in the reports controller.

Answer 1

Have you tried passing layout: false? What versions of axlsx, axlsx_rails, rails, and rubyzip are you using?

Answer 2

In the end it all came down to moving the controller code into a lib file. This way I call it in the controller to get the data if it needs to be rendered via web-requests as well as via the Mailer method where I recreate the @variables the view template is looking for.

Here is the finished salient parts of the report mailer method:

data = ReportUtils.get_data(args)
xlsx = render_to_string(template: 'path/to/report.xlsx', locals: {:@period => period, :@date_ranges => data[:date_ranges], :@data => data[:data]})
attachments["report.xlsx"] = {content: xlsx, mime_type: Mime::XLSX}