An empty string with File-IO in VoltRb

I'm trying to do some file-reading in VoltRb and embed the contents of those files in my views. I initially planned that I would read the files on the server-side (since the client-side doesn't support file-reading), and then pass the strings of those files on to the client, but it seems that I'm getting an empty string for my files on the client.

Here is some code to demonstrate my problem:

file.txt

file contents

main_controller.rb

if RUBY_ENGINE == 'ruby'
  file       = File.open("app/files_to_read/lib/file.txt", "r")
  $file_text = file.read
  file.close
  puts $file_text # returns "file contents" on the server side
  puts $file_text.class # returns "String" on the server side
end

module Main
  class MainController < Volt::ModelController
    model :page

    def index
      page._text = $file_text
      puts $file_text # returns an empty string in the browser console
    end
    ...
  end
end

index.html

<:Title>
  Home

<:Body>
  <h1>Home</h1>
  <p>{{ _text }}</p>
  <!-- ^ an empty string -->

My directory tree looks like this:

app
├── files_to_read
│   └── lib
│       └── file.txt
└── main
    ├── assets
    ├── config
    ├── controllers
    │   └── main_controller.rb
    ├── lib
    ├── tasks
    └── views
        └── main
            ├── about.html
            ├── index.html
            └── main.html

Why am I getting an empty string for my file and how do I fix this?

So one thing to keep in mind is that controllers will be run twice, once on the client, and once on the server. So the client one will be a different instance than the ones on the server, so they won't have access to the $file_text global.

What you can do though is create a task that reads the file and then returns the text of the file. Check out @RickCarlino's excellent tasks tutorial video: http://datamelon.io/blog/2015/creating-volt-task-objects.html

Thanks