What is the "Rails Way" to load templated pages - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am just starting to pick up Ruby on Rails. I rather like it, but I ran into a roadblock. I know of two ways to solve a problem but I am curious as to what the "Rails Way" to do this is.
The Setup
I have an index page that lists project descriptions. When a user clicks on a project it brings them to the show function of the projects controller. Projects in the list are loaded from a MySQL database.
What I Want To Do
I want to be able to load project specific information on each "Project Page." This information consists of documentation, code examples, etc. Each page will have the same general template.
Way 1
Store the HTML and text in the MySQL database in a "Sections" table and load all the sections related to that project. Display each section going down the page.
Way 2 (The way I would rather do it)
Have a separate view for each project with the full documentation. Load a specific view based on the project that is loaded in the show function
Comments
Is there some third way in Rails that I am not used to thinking of since I come from using CodeIgniter?
I am completely up for adapting to what the "Rails Way" is, but I am just not sure what the proper convention for this kind of thing is.
Or is this problem a case of, it does not matter how you do it at all?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

There are many ways to do this, one of the easiest ways is to override default template.(render :action doesn’t run any code in the target action only template)
This is Way2 in your question. Example:
def show
#project = Project.find(params[:id])
if #project.has_template?
render :action => "show_#{#project.template_name}" and return
end
render :action => "show"
end
In this example directory app/views/projects should have templates for each project
with names like "show.html.erb" for default one and "show_myspecialproject.html.erb" for project with template_name "myspecialproject" , etc....
Template_name is a method that tell you if project has such or should use default, you can put any logic in this method, it can be additional column id table or just template_name can be equal to project name, or it can just check if file exist in current directory.
You can also use partial templates if you want to use show.html.erb because you have code duplications and keep your templates DRY.
http://rails.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Partials.html
This way
controller action is default
def show
#project = Project.find(params[:id])
end
in show.html.erb
<h1><%= #project.name %></h1>
<%= render #project.tamplate_name %>
In this example all partial templates should start with "_" ,
Ex. : "_myspecialproject.html.erb"

Answer 2

If each project has the same general template, I don't know what the value is of having different views.
Here's a suggestion to try on for size.
You can store the documentation, code examples, etc. in a sections table, or each type in it's own table. If you have them in a sections table, include a type field, and use different classes for each type. Let's say Documentation and CodeExample are two such classes.
Define a has_one in your Project class for each type with a :conditions option.
class Project < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :documentation, :conditions => { :type => "Documentation" }
has_one :code_example, :conditions => { :type => "CodeExample" }
end
class Documentation < ActiveRecord::Base
set_table_name "sections"
belongs_to :project
end
If you want to organize your project show page to include the sections, you can call partials for each section type.
If you want your project show page to have a link or tab (you can implement tabs on the page using links or CSS formatted buttons) go to a show action in a controller for the section type. Using nested routes for this might be an idea you want to use.
resources :projects do
resource :documentation
resource :code_example
end
These are some ideas. You might take what you want from my ideas, if you don't want to do it all this way.