Provide a helper proxy to access helper methods from outside views. Closes #10839 [Josh Peek]

git-svn-id: http://svn-commit.rubyonrails.org/rails/trunk@9234 5ecf4fe2-1ee6-0310-87b1-e25e094e27de

actionpack/CHANGELOG

@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 *SVN*
 
+* Provide a helper proxy to access helper methods from outside views. Closes #10839 [Josh Peek]
+  e.g. ApplicationController.helpers.simple_format(text)
+
 * Improve documentation. [Xavier Noria, leethal, jerome]
 
 * Ensure RJS redirect_to doesn't html-escapes string argument. Closes #8546 [josh, eventualbuddha, Pratik]

actionpack/lib/action_controller/helpers.rb

@@ -167,6 +167,15 @@ module ActionController #:nodoc:
         attrs.flatten.each { |attr| helper_method(attr, "#{attr}=") }
       end
 
+      # Provides a proxy to access helpers methods from outside the view.
+      def helpers
+        unless @helper_proxy
+          @helper_proxy = ActionView::Base.new
+          @helper_proxy.extend master_helper_module
+        else
+          @helper_proxy
+        end
+      end
 
       private
         def default_helper_module!

actionpack/test/controller/helper_test.rb

@@ -130,6 +130,22 @@ class HelperTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
     assert methods.include?('foobar')
   end
 
+  def test_helper_proxy
+    methods = ApplicationController.helpers.methods.map(&:to_s)
+
+    # ActionView
+    assert methods.include?('pluralize')
+
+    # abc_helper.rb
+    assert methods.include?('bare_a')
+
+    # fun/games_helper.rb
+    assert methods.include?('stratego')
+
+    # fun/pdf_helper.rb
+    assert methods.include?('foobar')
+  end
+
   private
     def expected_helper_methods
       TestHelper.instance_methods.map(&:to_s)