Correct Rails Method for Lots of Logic - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am currently building a site that runs an autonomous competition every week. The logic I have checks if the previous week has a winner assigned, and if it does not, it rolls through, finds a winner and assigns a trophy.
The logic all works, but a lot of it is run in the application controller, and in my core I feel this is not right.
For example, if first place has more votes than second place, and second place has more votes than third place, it would need to create a first second and third place trophy and reward it to the correct users.
if first_place > second_place && second_place > third_place
#week_previous.winner_id = week_entries[0].id
#week_previous.save
first_trophy = week_entries[0].user.trophies.new
first_trophy.week_id = #week_previous.id
first_trophy.user_id = week_entries[0].user_id
first_trophy.position = "first"
first_trophy.country = week_entries[0].user.country
first_trophy.pro = false
first_trophy.save
if second_place >= 1
second_trophy = week_entries[1].user.trophies.new
second_trophy.week_id = #week_previous.id
second_trophy.user_id = week_entries[1].user_id
second_trophy.position = "second"
second_trophy.country = week_entries[1].user.country
second_trophy.pro = false
second_trophy.save
end
if third_place >= 1
third_trophy = week_entries[2].user.trophies.new
third_trophy.week_id = #week_previous.id
third_trophy.user_id = week_entries[2].user_id
third_trophy.position = "third"
third_trophy.country = week_entries[2].user.country
third_trophy.pro = false
third_trophy.save
end
end
This is building the Trophies directly into the controller, and I've often heard the 'fat model skinny controller' argument, and I feel the way I am running this goes totally against that!
How would I move the trophy creations into the model? I am sure I could use something like after_save in the weeks model, but I am not entirely sure how to keep the logic working. I've had a few attempts, but I am often getting the error undefined method to_model.
I know I could just plough on and get it working, but I just feel like it's not the 'Rails Way' of doing things, so I'd like to work it out in its early stages.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Edit based on comments:
Thanks for taking the time to look at this. In a nut shell, what I am trying to achieve is a system where a competition runs from Monday to Sunday. The 'Active Week' is scoped to the Week where the Date.today falls between the :start_date and :end_date.
The following Monday starts a new week, this moves what was the active week to the previous week, and it then allocates trophies to the top 3 entries from the previous week. It allocates the trophies by checking if the previous week has a winner_id. If it does, it doesn't run any of the logic, but once the scope moves onto a new week, the previous weeks :winner_id is now nil, so the logic runs the first time somebody comes to the site in the new week.
To dumb it down:
Week is a resource, which has_many Entries.
An Entry belongs_to a User, belongs_to a Week, and has_many Votes.
A Vote belongs_to an Entry
A User has_many Entries and has_many Trophies
A Trophy belongs to a User and belongs_to a Week
So, users Vote on an Entry on the current active Week. Once the week is outside of the active scope, it creates Trophies for the Users that placed in the top 3 positions of the week.

Answer 1

It is hard to give with a good advise without knowing the context. But what catches my eye is that there is a lot of repetion in that code and that you update user trophies in that repetitions. Therefore I would at least move that logic into the user as a first step:
# in user.rb
def record_trophy_win(prev_week, entry, position)
trophies.create(
week_id: prev_week.id,
user_id: entry.user_id,
position: position,
country: entry.user.county,
pro: false
)
end
That allows to change the partial in the controller to this:
if first_place > second_place && second_place > third_place
#week_previous.update_attribute(:winner_id, week_entries[0].id)
first_trophy = week_entries[0].user.record_trophy_win(
#week_previous, week_entries[0], 'first'
)
second_trophy = week_entries[1].user.record_trophy_win(
#week_previous, week_entries[1], 'second'
) if second_place >= 1
third_trophy = week_entries[2].user.record_trophy_win(
#week_previous, week_entries[2], 'third'
) if third_place >= 1
end
That logic might in a next step belong into a Trophy class. Depends on the context...
And I noticed that your week_entry has an user. And you add to that user a trophy that again has some user fields. Doesn't that result in a circular dependency? Or do you override an existing record with the exact same entries? That need some clearity.

Answer 2

One way to isolate business logic is the Service Object design pattern. Example:
class TrophyRewarder
def initialize(winners, last_week_winners)
#winners = winners
#last_week_winners = last_week_winners
end
def reward(options)
# All code to determine and store winners comes here
end
end
You can put this code in the folder app/services and call it in your controller like this:
trophy_rewarder = TrophyRewarder.new(users, Winners.from_last_week)
trophy_rewarder.reward(options)
The good thing is that you can call this service object from a controller but also from a background task. Another good thing is that the service object can use a lot of different data/AR models, but is is not tied to a model.
I hope this helps a little in showing how you can organize your code.