passing a variable to a partial

from here

Passing a variable to a partial means you can be clever about re-using your code to output different collections of data in the same way.

Essentially you just write:

<%= render :partial => '/path/to/_partial', :locals => { :items => @items } %>

The local variable items now makes each element of @items available in the partial. e.g.

<% for item in items -%>
  do something...
<% end -%>