ViewTargetActionSupport#renderToElement()

Creates a new DOM element, renders the view into it, then returns the element.

By default, the element created and rendered into will be a BODY element, since this is the default context that views are rendered into when being inserted directly into the DOM.

let element = view.renderToElement();
element.tagName; // => "BODY"

You can override the kind of element rendered into and returned by specifying an optional tag name as the first argument.

let element = view.renderToElement('table');
element.tagName; // => "TABLE"

This method is useful if you want to render the view into an element that is not in the document's body. Instead, a new body element, detached from the DOM is returned. FastBoot uses this to serialize the rendered view into a string for transmission over the network.

app.visit('/').then(function(instance) {
  let element;
  Ember.run(function() {
    element = renderToElement(instance);
  });

  res.send(serialize(element));
});