Using ActiveResource, Ruby on Rails, Is there a clean way to do the following:
I have house ActiveResource model and chair ActiveResource model, and both can have comments. I want to reuse the comment ActiveResource model for both.
# ActiveResource wraps HTTP POST Requests to the following
# And then parsess the responses, and then creates instances of my ActiveResource models
POST http://3rd.party.restful.api.com/admin/houses/1/comments
POST http://3rd.party.restful.api.com/admin/houses/1/chairs/3/comments
I can only think of the following:
class Comment < ActiveResource::Base
self.site = "http://3rd.party.restful.api.com"
self.prefix = "/admin/:prefix_path/"
end
And then doing the following:
comment = Comment.new(:text => "some text", :prefix_path => "houses/1/chairs/3")
Please stop me from doing this.
I think you're asking if you can define the routes for each while only using one model, right?
There are two options:
First, the simplest way: just define the route twice.
resources :houses do
resources :comments
resources :chairs do
resources :comments
end
end
The routes file won't care that you're telling it the comments model can be reached from two places, and it will work basically as you expect -- views will just live in the 'comments' folder.
A second, more complex way to do it, define a namespace that you want to nest under. Then you'll end up with two controllers: CommentsController and Chairs::CommentsContoller. You might also create two sets of views, but you don't have to (the second controller can simply explicitly render the first controller's views).
For a good explanation of how namespacing would work, you can see the answer where I originally learned about it.
For what it's worth, this second approach is nice, because you can make some minor tweaks in how the model is presented depending on how it's accessed, but you've still only got one model in the DB.
Good luck! I'll be happy to try and answer questions in the comments!
Related
I am little bit confused in using rails route. I need some suggestion about customizing my url.
This is my current url
http://localhost:3000/posts/product/41?product_id=2
and
http://localhost:3000/posts/product/41?model_id=24&product_id=2
This is my link
<%= link_to product_model.name, controller: :posts,action: :product,product_id: params[:product_id],model_id: product_model.id
Logically product should come first in url. But why model prefers first here.
And i need my url something like this
http://localhost:3000/posts/product/41/mobile
and
http://localhost:3000/posts/product/41/mobile/nokia
Since i am not familiar with rails route i didn't write any special coding in my route
Here is the simple route exist
resources :posts
Ok your question here actually contains two different problems, so i will give suggestions to both.
1. Nested resources
Your first problem is to use "nested routes". Rails guide has a long and good article about routes and how to write and use them, including nested routes. You can check it out here: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html#nested-resources.
However in your situation would the solution look something like this:
resources :category do
resources :sub_category do
resources :products do
resources :models
end
end
end
You can now greate links like this
<%= link_to product_model.name, category_sub_category_product_model_path(#category, #sub_category, #product, product_model) %>
You can see that i have removed posts, see 3. Refactor design to see why. If you really want this as a action on posts, should you however do something like this (but would recommend this!):
get "posts/product/:category_id/:subcategory_id/:product_id/:model_id", to "posts#product", as: :posts_product
This would be used like this in your views:
<%= link_to product_model.name, posts_product_path(#category, #sub_category, #product, product_model) %>
2. Pretty URL's
Your second problem is to use model names instead of id's in your urls. The simpels solution for this is having a unique attribute on your model that you can use instead of id, and then just add a to_param method. Fx for product could we do something like this:
class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
def to_param
name
end
end
Ryan Bates have made a good screencast about this: http://railscasts.com/episodes/63-model-name-in-url-revised. If you want something more flexible should you use the gem Friendly Id. And again does Ryan comes to the rescue with another great RailsCast: http://railscasts.com/episodes/314-pretty-urls-with-friendlyid.
3. Change design
Ok well so this is just my opinion, feel free to ignore it. But their is some bad practices and signs in your examples, so let me just quickly go through what i think you should improve on.
Restful actions
You should, when possible always avoid creating controller actions that is not restful (simply put is the base actions index, show, new, create, edit, update and destroy the only restful actions). In your example does this mean that the product action of the posts controller should be changed to something restful. Why not move it to the product model controller and call it "show"?
Deeply nested resources
You should avoid nesting your routes to deeply. Is it really important to show both the category, the sub category, the product AND the model in your url? Maybe that's how your models are associated internally in your application but why should the user know this? If you don't have a list of subcategories at "/posts/product" and a list of products at "posts/product/41" is there no reason to have so long a route. A rule of thumb is "nest no deeper then two levels", ie. ":category/:sub_category". Further more does short routes mean better SEO.
As i said, feel free to ignore these suggestions, your application would work without these changes. However changing these things would greatly help you structure you code, and keep your codebase clean and maintainable. These rules and principles is not something i have just conjured out of nothing, but very accepted principles in the Rails community. You can google each of these principles or patterns and see a lot of articles and posts on why it's a good idea to follow them, especially when you work with Rails.
Resources
Rails Routing from the Outside In — Ruby on Rails Guides
norman/friendly_id - Github
#314 Pretty URLs with FriendlyId - RailsCasts
#63 Model Name in URL (revised) - RailsCasts
Take a look at the friendly-id gem
There's a great RailsCast about it
Add this to your model inmodel.rb
def to_param
name
end
and then add
#model = Model.find_by_name(params[:id]) to your show method, then you can get the url as you mentioned above.
PS: You Should have name field for Model table in your schema.
I think you are looking for nested routes. Please refer this link http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html#nested-resources
and use to_param method in the model if you want to display model_name instead of id as explained by #Ajay Kumar
def to_param
name
end
where name is the model attribute for that specific model.
Why not a namespace?
namespace :posts do
resources :products
end
This should do I think..
Namespace does not include restful ids into the scope..
I have a CRUD resource defined in my routes.rb file: resource :user.
I'm adding a new controller method for the user called search_places, which is performed on the user to find other users with the same places. I'm adding a route it.
Right now, I have:
post '/user/search_place', which isn't very DRY. I'm new to Rails and I was reading the Rails routing documentation and figured that I could possibly use
resource :user do
collection do
post 'search_place'
end
end
Is this considered good practice? I know this works (it passes my rspec route test), but is that how its best done?
Thank you,
When you add second don't need of first.
Add this:
resources :user do
collection do
post 'search_place'
end
end
Remove this:
resources :user
That makes DRY :)
Suggestion: Resources name should be defined in plural if u follow rails convention. (i.e) resources :users
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
I am using Rails single-table inheritance with a superclass Content and a number of subclasses (such as Article, Comment etc.) I am trying to get away with a single controller, and I have set up the routes thusly:
resources :contents
resources :articles, :controller => "contents"
resources :comments, :controller => "contents"
This way, /articles/new gets routed to contents#new which seems to be what I want.
Within the controller and the views, however, I need to tailor the functionality a bit depending on which actual model I am dealing with. For that purpose, I need to determine the original requested resource or otherwise find out which subclass I am dealing with.
Looking at params for /articles/newwithin the common controller gives {"action"=>"new", "controller"=>"contents"}, which obviously does not provide the information I need.
Either the answer is really obvious or I am using model inheritance wrong. Which one is it? :)
You can extract the part of the request path you are interested in like this
path = request.fullpath[%r{^/(articles|comments)/}, 1] # articles or comments
Once you have it you can get the model class like that:
model_class = path.classify.constantize # Article or Comment
Bests,
Richard
Say I have this setup:
My model is 'content', and I want to use this model in 2 controllers.
blog_controller.rb
article_controller.rb
My 'content' model has a property 'content_type' which tells me if this content is a 'blog' or a 'article'.
This seems to prevent me from doing:
resources :article
resources :blog
right? since the models are different? or can I still do this?
You can still do it.
In your routes file, the resources method is, by default, looking for a controller of the same name that you pass it. So regardless of what the model's name is, if you have a controller named blog_controller you can do resources :blog
In classic SO fashion, instead of answering your question I'm going to criticism your implementation ;-)
I think the root of your problem is that you want a single table for content, with code shared between articles and blogs. In rails, the way to do that is called "Single Table Inheritance".