Can I 'alias' a Rails active model to another class? - ruby-on-rails

First off I am sure I am not asking this question correctly as this is an advanced Rails topic over my head right now. Here is what I have for routes:
concern :assetable do
resources :assets, concerns: [:workable, :trackable, :flagged, :historical, :commentable, :uploadable], shallow: true do
resources :assets, path: :components, as: :components, shallow: true#, only: [:index, :create, :new]
end
end
and my asset model:
has_many :assets, :as => :assetable, :dependent => :destroy
alias_attribute :components, :assets
My premise here is I have an Asset model that can polymorphicly belong to pretty much any other model in my Rails app - including another Asset. My my case I am limiting this case to one level deep and calling these Components. This is like having a car as an asset and it has an engine, transmission etc. as a component. For my purposes it's simple enough to make a common set of attributes that are shared between both the assets and components,
Now I could just create an entire new model but the entire data structure, views controllers etc are for the most part the same so I figured that was just a waste of time and makes it a mess to keep this code in sync.
As I go along now I am having to add some logic to my views to ensure the headings i.e. "Assets" vs. "Components" and I have a simple instance variable in my controller #asset_class which returns 'asset' or 'component'. The ugly part now is when I start working with routes. All the awesome Rails url helpers etc. fail me here because if I call url_for( ) on a component record I get /assets/etc/etc when I really want /components/etc/etc/. I essentially want to Assets nested under Assets to be represented as Component class not Asset.
Can I do this? I think this is easier way but I am open to other suggestions (and question edits) because I may be way off here on my logic and design.
** UPDATE **
Here is some more background from the first comment:
So in my Asset show controller I deliberately added an exception to illustrate this. Here is my url:
http://localhost:3000/components/5
and from my error console I have:
>> #asset
=> #<Asset id: 5, assetable_id: 1, assetable_type: "Asset", name: "...>
>> url_for(#asset)
=> "http://localhost:3000/assets/5"
>> component_path(#asset)
=> "/components/5"
>> asset_path(#asset)
=> "/assets/5"
I know that I could use component_path(#asset) but url_for is much cleaner if I can let Rails do all the work vs constantly having to add some conditional logic every time I want to add a link_to etc. I also see that I need to add some conditionals to my routes based on assessable_type as Assets should not show up in Components and vice-versa.

You might consider creating a Component class that inherits from Asset so that you can store all those in the assets table but treat them differently. This is generally called single table inheritance.
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Inheritance.html

You could define your components routes like so:
resources :components, controller: 'assets', path: :components, as: :components, shallow: true#, only: [:index, :create, :new], defaults: { components: true }
This uses the technique described in Specifying a Controller to Use section of the Rails Routing from the Outside In. It also uses the defaults option from the Defining Defaults section of the same guide to inform the controller that it's using a components route and not an assets route.

Related

Handling Rails routes/models with belongs_to relationship

So this may be more of a convention question, but im writing a todo app to learn how to use rails as an API (Im somewhat intermediate with using rails normally) but this time im using it with React for the front end.
Im making a simple todo app, two models in particular being "Lists" and "ListItems". Lists has_many ListItems of course, and a ListItem belongs_to a List.
So naturally I have the routes set up like so:
resources :lists do
resources :list_items
end
Giving me routes similar to: /api/v1/lists/:list_id/list_items etc.., However I saw some people doing a similar app set it up like:
namespace :v1 do
resources :list_items
resources :lists
end
Which confuses me because how would you handle passing the actual "List" params to the route, when the route itself would not have a List_id param?
Or would this more be used for a join table somehow..but you would still have to populate the List_id regardless when creating a list_item for a specific list correct?
Is there a preferred way of doing this as far as routing goes? (And I suppose creating tables?) Since a has_many_through seems not really necessary in this case?
Unless there is more to the story, you are doing it the more conventional way. I suggest your can safely disregard that not-nested approach. The only enhancement I suggest is using shallow: true, like:
namespace :api do
namespace :v1 do
resources :lists do
resources :list_items, shallow: true
end
end
end
You can read more about shallow nesting in the guide.

Self nesting rails categories

I have an store application, where I need to make custom routing system where URL stores categories for products. For example, http://example.com/languages/ruby/rails will display category#show named 'rails', that has parent named 'ruby', that has parent named 'languages' and and URL of http://example.com/languages/ruby/rails/store will display product in this category.
Currently I have:
category.rb
belongs_to :parent, class_name: 'Category'
has_many :categories, foreign_key: :parent_id
has_many :products
routes.rb
resources :categories, :path => '', :only => [:index, :show] do
resources :products, :path => '', :only => [:show]
end
root :to => 'products#index'
but it still stacks up to 2, e.g. URL http://example.com and http://example.com/languages shows list of categories/subcategories, but http://example.com/languages/ruby have params: {"action"=>"show", "controller"=>"products", "category_id"=>"language", "id"=>"ruby"}
Removing products from routes does not help at all - then it just says that No route matches [GET] "/language/ruby", although I assume It might cause need for extra check if current URL point on category or product later on.
Also I tried get '*categories/:id', to: 'category#show' variations
+ I am using friendly_id gem so that path do not look like http://example.com/2/54/111/6
I just want to find out what is the best ruby on rails solution for this kind of situations, when you need search engine optimizations + endless (e.g. no way to define how deep such recursion can go) nested resources that nest themselves (including fact that category/language/category/ruby/category/rails just looks ugly).
Note: most information I used is taken from Stack Overflow and railscasts.com (including pro/revised episodes), so mentioning a good source with information like this will be great too.
I solved this myself recently with a CMS I built on Rails recently. I basically construct the routes dynamically at runtime from the database records. I wrote this blog post on the strategy:
http://codeconnoisseur.org/ramblings/creating-dynamic-routes-at-runtime-in-rails-4
The core of the solution (adapting the blog post above) is simply iterate over the database records and construct the routes needed for each category. This is the main class for doing that:
class DynamicRouter
def self.load
Website::Application.routes.draw do
Category.all.each do |cat|
get cat.route,
to: "categories#show",
defaults: { id: cat.id },
as: "#{cat.routeable_name}_#{cat.name}"
end
end
end
def self.reload
Website::Application.routes_reloader.reload!
end
end
For the above, the Category model should implement a "routeable_name" method which simply gives an underscored version of the category name that uniquely names that category's route (its not strictly necessary, but helps when doing "rake routes" to see what you have). and the #route method constructs the full route to the category. Notice the defaults which sets the ID param for the category. This makes the controller action a very simple lookup on the category's ID field like so:
class CategoryController < ApplicationController
def show
#category = Category.find(params[:id])
end
end

Find path of a nested or non-nested resource

Working in Rails 3.2, I a polymorphic Subscription model whose subscribable_type may or may not be a nested resource. I'm trying to display the full URL link in an email view, but have no knowledge whether or not that resource is nested.
When I try url_for #model on a nested resource, it fails, expecting url_for [#parent, #model]. Unfortunately, I do not know how to discover the parent as defined in the Routes table.
Is there a way to identify the route path for a nested resource? If I could match the model to a route, I could fill in the necessary IDs.
As of right now, I've defined a method in my models called parent_resource :model that can be traversed, but I'm hoping there's a better way.
Within my routes.draw:
resources :projects do
resources :topics do
resources :comments
end
end
resources :subscriptions
(I realize I shouldn't be nesting so deeply)
Edit: Additional Information
My Subscription model is a resource I use to manage notifications. Subscribable types are provided a link that toggles the subscription for that user on that subscribable_type / subscribable_id on or off.
I then go through a Notifier < ActionMailer::Base which is provided the Subscription instance, and mail the user.
Through that setup, I'm trying to get the full url of subscription.subscribable which may be a Topic or a Project.
I realize that I could hammer out the conditions in this small case through a helper method, but I am curious to know how one would approach this if there were dozens of nested model pairs.
You mention subscription but your routes are completely different. I'm guessing the routes you gave were just an example then. I would start with trying to get rid of the custom parent_resource method you created. You can probably do the same thing simpler with adding a belongs_to through and maybe with conditions if you need too:
belongs_to :projects, :through => :topics, :conditions => ['whatever your conditions are']
I'd have one of those per parent type so I can do things like:
object.project.present?
And from there I could easily know if its nested or not and simplify things by letting rails do the parent traversal. That ought to simplify things enough to where you can at least figure out what type of subscription you have pretty easily. Next, I'd probably add some matched routes or try to cram an :as => 'somename' into my routes so I can call them directly after determining the nested part. One option would be something like this:
match "projects/subscription/:id" => "projects#subscription", :as => :project_subscription
match "other/subscription/:id" => "other#subscription", :as => :other_subscription
And so its pretty obvious to see how you can just specify which url you want now with something like:
if #object.project.present?
project_subscription_path(#object)
else
other_subscription_path(#object)
end
This may not be the best way to accomplish what I'm doing, but this works for me right now.
This builds a nested resource array off the shortest valid route helper and generates a URL:
(Tested in rails console)
resource = Comment.first
resource_name = resource.class.to_s.downcase
helper = Rails.application.routes.named_routes.helpers.grep(/.*#{resource_name}_path$/).first.to_s.split('_')
built = helper.slice!(-2,2) # Shortest possible valid helper, "comment_path"
while !(app.respond_to?(built.join("_").to_sym))
built.unshift helper.pop
end
built.pop # Get rid of "path"
resources = built.reverse.reduce([]) { |memo, name|
if name == resource_name
memo << resource
else
memo << memo.last.send(name.to_sym) # comment.topic, or topic.project (depends on belongs_to)
end
}
resources.reverse!
app.polymorphic_url(resources) # "http://www.example.com/projects/1/topics/1/comments/1"

Simple Acts_as_tree with nested_resources

Using Rails 3.1.1 and the gem acts_as_tree. I have googled the issue and checked similar questions here at SO (the answers are too old, or irrelevant).
I have a model called articles with a route that today looks like:
resources :articles, :path => '', :only => :show
resources :articles, :path => 'articles', :except => :show
I have three articles: "book", "chapter1" and "chapter2". Where book is parent to chapter1 and chapter2.
Today, my path to each article is: host.com/book, host.com/chapter1 and host.com/chapter2. I want the url path to be host.com/book/chapter1 and host.com/book/chapter2 , i.e. nested routes.
How can I create this in a clean simple manner?
Basically, I want a path that will be host.com/:parent_id/:parent_id/:id with N numbers of :parent_id. Pretty much how Wordpress-articles are routed.
I don't believe route globbers is the solution, but I might be wrong. It seems to give the same result for host.com/:id and host.com/foo/bar/:id which will result in duplicate content.
A)
If you have a solution for the routing and the only problem with it is that you're concerned about duplicate content issues, you could consider adding <link rel="canonical" href="..."> to the pages generated from those requests. It's not bulletproof though, as Google considers it a suggestion.
Not sure if the route globbers solution would take care of generating the URLs with parent IDs though.
B)
You don't need the parent IDs to perform the routing, correct? You just want to include them in the URLs and route those requests the same as if using the URLs like example.com/chapter1, correct?
If you'd consider a solution that's not purely at the Rails level, what about rewriting the URLs on those requests so that /:parent_id/:parent_id/:id becomes /:id before Rails processes it? That would be easier if there was a static prefix, like /articles/:parent_id/:parent_id/:id.
I imagine you'd need to write some helpers to generate the URLs with parent IDs for linking to those resources.
Duplicate Content
Either way, you'll need to generate URLs that include the parent IDs, so duplicate content issues probably aren't too likely if you only link to those resources using those URLs.
You have three "articles"... "book", "chapter1" and "chapter2" all represent same 'resources', named 'articles'. Same 'resource' cannot be nested. If you need nested routes you have to define separately parent resource and child resource. following code spinet may help you
class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :chapter
accepts_nested_attributes_for :chapters
end
class Chapter < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :book
acts_as_tree :parent_id
end
match '*p1/*p2/*p3/.../*pn' => 'articles#show'
The ... is not literal, just define as many parameters as you need upto n.
URL:
host.com/book/chapter1
params[:p1] = 'book'
params[:p2] = 'chapter1'
params[:p3] = nil
URL:
host.com/book/chapter1/section2/sentence4
params[:p1] = 'book'
params[:p2] = 'chapter1'
params[:p3] = 'section2'
params[:p4] = 'sentence4'
params[:p5] = nil
That'd have to be your LAST route.
I think it would also make any catchall routes inoperable, but they're now commented out in the default routes.rb in Rails 3, If you use them, you'd have to manually specify all routes normally handled by the old style catchall routes.
And, if you have a controller named articles, you could never have a book titled 'articles' same with all your controllers, To be safe you probably have to rename all your controllers, i.e articles becomes X_articles. You could never have a book call X_articles then, and so on....
Totally untested.
What you're looking to do is use Rails for something it isn't made for. No matter what answer you get here, it either won't be RESTful, DRY, or make sense to be used with Active Record. Consider restructuring your idea, or bring your application to another platform if it's not too late.
Source to back up my claim: https://stackoverflow.com/a/174287/628859

Rails: allow singular namespace and resource to share a view folder

I have the following routes defining certain resources:
resource :account, :only => [:show]
namespace :account do
resource :billing
end
So, I have an AccountsController which generates the "show" page at /account.
I also have a BillingsController which I want to be viewed at /account/billing.
This is working fine, but one thing that's bugging me is the convention says the view folder for the AccountsController is plural even though its a singular resource -- not a big deal, but when creating a matching namespace for the nested resource I now have two seperate view folders -- /app/views/account(for namespace) and app/views/accounts(for account resource).
So, this kind of throws me off.
What would be the best way to make the AccountsController use the singular account folder for views?
For what it's worth, I decided it would be easiest to change AccountsController to AccountController and change my routes.rb file like so:
resource :account, :controller => 'account'
That was a little cleaner than anything I could figure out.
There are a bunch of options, but using self.prepend_view_path("views/account") in a method called by a before_filter in the AccountsController should work. It will force it to look in the specified directory for a view, before checking the default.

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