Ruby on Rails: New controller for photos? - ruby-on-rails

I have a one-to-many relationship between my Profile class and Photos class. Profile holds the user's information and photos holds the user's pictures. Currently, the "Upload photo" link shows at the bottom of the profile view. I want to have the link show up on a separate view instead of cramming everything on the same form. Should I just create a new view called profile_photo.html.erb to show this link or should I create a new controller and model that associates with the photos? What's the recommended practice?

The "Photos" class should be called "Photo", as Rails uses singular names for models.
Yes you should create a new controller for creating photos because it's another resource. You'll probably want to edit the photos eventually, adding descriptions and so on.

I agree with Radar, you'll want to create a PhotosController. When you do that then you can take it a step further and define the has_many relationship in the routes.rb file as well. Like so:
map.resources :photos
map.resources :profiles, :has_many => :photos
This will generate urls like profile_photos_path, new_profile_photo_path, etc... run the rake routes command to see what it gives you. This will help to keep you code DRY and easy to read.

Related

Rails 4 new form defaults from params

I am using form_for in the _form.html.erb view in order to create my form for both the edit and new actions, as per a standard scaffold.
I have a model Owner which has_many pets.
I would like to put an html link on my views/owners/show.html.erb to create a new pet for said owner. This link will point to the new action of pets_controller.rb which when accessed will render the view in pets/new.html.erb
What I want to happen is for the the owner_id to be passed with the link in the url to the new action of pets_controller.rb and then be used as the default for a collection_select in pets/new.html.erb
So I have a link to create a new pet but because that link was on a specific owner page, I want the form to create a new pet to have that owner already set, so the user does not have to select from the list.
This has to be done without changing the behaviour of the edit action/view in pets.
I know that I can pass GET arguments then access them in the controller via params, then create variables in the action which are passed to the view. I can then manually check for a default and set it in the view. I do not need assistance in coding if this is the only solution.
Is there is a better way to do this? A format with which I can pass the params such that the view will just pick them up? Without manually editing my controllers and views?
While my personal inclination would be to do as you said and pass a parameter in the link helper and then access the params array in the pets view, you may find that this is the perfect opportunity to explore Nested Resources. Essentially, you could declare owners/:owner_id/pets/:pet_id route with:
resources :owners do
resources :pets
end
You could then link to this route, and reference :owner_id without having to append the query string to the URI (making somewhat cleaner for reuse).
This is likely more work for you, but also potentially more extensible (and certainly more inline with the Rails way of doing things).
REVISION
Added the following regarding link helpers to the comments, but wanted to reflect it in the answer as well.
To show a pet should be:
<%= link_to owner_pet_path( owner_variable, pet_variable) %>
To view pets' index index should be:
<%= link_to owner_pet_path( owner_variable ) %>
The answer given to this question is fantastic.
As #ConnorCMcKee suggests it would be wise to consider nesting your routes. However, if you are a beginner as myself I found that it helped my learning to simply nest my second controller into the first (i.e. nest PetsController into OwnersController) as a first step. Then afterwards I would continue with the routes.
The method would be something like:
1./ In owners/index.html.erb:
Links to PetsController index action
The key to make this work is to send the :owner_id in your link parameters. Then that Pets index action will have access to that :owner_id and know which :owner_id called it.
2./ In PetsController you would then be able to find that Owner using that id, like so:
params[:owner_id]
Then your actions can start to take advantage of knowing what Owner called them. Remember though that all your redirects inside your PetsController need to preserve params[:owner_id]. That is because once you are inside that nested structure you have to maintain it and stay inside it and always know which :owner_id you are working with.

Do I generate multiple controllers?

I'm on the rails learning journey and am going about making my first rails app. It's a very simple app where users can create posts on a variety of topics.
I generated my first scaffold for a page I want to have called 'London' (rails generate scaffold london location:string content:text). Users of the site can post a post and location of a place to visit in London.
Then I wanted to replicate this functionality for 'Paris'. Do I generate a new scaffold or go about it a different way? Some advice would be appreciated.
Also the url gets pluralized (mywebsite.com/londons). I added
resources :londons, :path => "london"
which changed the url but when I go to make a post I get a No route matches [POST] "/londons" error. Anyone got a fix for this?
Thank you!
well instead of generating controllers for each city a better way could be to create relationships between models.For example you could create a cities and a locations scaffold then inside your city model you can do
has_many :locations
and inside you locations model you can do
belongs_to :city
that way you wouldn't need to create new scaffolds for every city.You can read up on how to use relationships from the guides here
Well probably You want to generalise things first :)
What You actually need are pages (or maybe topics, articles). You can implement Page model that will have such attributes as title (which can be London, Paris etc).
The You will introduce a PagesController. index action will lead to a list of pages, show will render particular page.
In your routes You will do something like this:
resources :pages

adding a method to an existing controller

I'm pretty new to rails, and I'm hoping you can help me understand how the following works.
At present I have a controller named projects (projects_controller.rb). From what I understand of ROR each controller has some basic (inherent) methods such as index, new, create, edit, show, etc. I would like to add a method called "help" and a view to display the help information.
At present a user can create many projects. The projects contain a set of fields that are populated by the user. I would like to add a help page that the user can access (via a link on the project screen) which explains each project field and how to best fill it out. I would like this to be an independent page (not just info displayed on the project's page).
As of now, the URL to the projects is (when editing a project): localhost:3001/projects/id/edit
I would like for the path to the help file to be localhost:3001/projects/id/help
If I want the help file to be located in the path listed above, am I correct in assuming that I need to create a new method, called "help", in the projects controller? And if so, is there something that I need to add to routes.rb to make it function? And would I use a link_to function in the Haml to create a link to it?
I'm sorry if this seems confusing or a lot of question. I appreciate your time. If you have any suggestions on whether on the right path please let me know. Thank you so much!
I think currently you have this in routes
resources :products do
end
just replace this with
resources :products do
get :help, :on => :member, :as => :help
end
And add method in controller and add view named help.erb.html(if you r using erb) in views/product folder.
you can use help_path and help_url

ruby on rails link_to newly created page

I've created in rails(3) a new html page in my project model named contact.html.erb and I am interested in linking to it from a different page, i've added the code:
<%= link_to 'contact', contact_project_path(#project) %>
Project is a model that belongs_to a User (which is the contact in the contact page).
This link gives me an error message saying that contact_project_path doesnt exist. I know I need to define it somewhere but I don't know where or how. I want the page to be specific per project. I've created an action in the project_controler named contact and left it empty.
What am i missing?
I've searched for a soloution for quite some time and haven't found an answer to this question anywhere else. I'm aware its a little bit basic but I have no other options.
-REVISED ANSWER-
Based on comments I see you're not trying to associate a contact model, just a view. In that case, you still need to change the routes file, but you need to decide if you want to get a single contact page for all projects, or one contact view per project. IE:
# Collection Contact
example.com/projects/contact # IE One contact view for all projects
# Member Contact
example.com/projects/1/contact # IE One contact view per project
Either way you need to use a block for your project resource in your routes file. So, if you want there to be one contact page for the collection (all projects), do:
resources :projects do
collection do
get 'contact'
end
end
Or, if you want one contact view per member (one per project) do:
resources :projects do
member do
get 'contact'
end
end
Either way this will give you helper methods which you can put into link_to
For the collection it should be contact_projects_path (no arguments), and for members it should be contact_project_path(#project) (pass in the project as an argument.
You can use get post put delete or match as a parameter in a collection or member block, that just tells Rails what kind of request to handle at that URL, and what helpers to generate. For normal views you want a GET request.
I hope this finally answers your question :)
-ORIGINAL ANSWER-
This is for routing to a MODEL, not just a view
Add to your routes.rb:
resources :projects do
resource :contact
end
If I understand your question correctly, that should create a helper called project_contact_path().
This record will be projects/123/contact.
If you want more than one contact per project, you'll need to make it plural (resource :contacts). Then your records would look like projects/123/contacts/123.
See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html
You would link to this using link_to( project_contact_path(#project) ) if there's only one contact per project, or link_to( project_contact_path(#project,#contact) ) if there are multiple contacts per project.
Have a look here:
http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html
You should be aware that contact_project_path(#project) isn't a restful routes (unless contact_project is a model but there is little chance). You'll have to declare this name, use :as

Why does Rails use plurals for new and create?

I understand why a Rails index method would use the plural form of a resource - we're showing all projects, for example.
And I understand why the show method would use the singular form - we only want to see one project, with a particular ID.
But I don't understand why new and create would use the plural. Is there a way to create more than one project at a time? Is there some other reasoning for using the plural here that someone could explain?
New and Create aren't plural, in the way I think about REST. Instead, I think about it like:
whatever.com is your base domain, and whatever.com/books means that you have a collection of resources each named book. The collection itself is named books.
So, when you want to create a new book, you are asking the collection for the information needed to create a new book. This becomes /books/new
When you actually create the book, you are posting information to /books. The HTTP verb is POST, so when you POST to your collection, you execute the create action.
This looks like a good starting point on REST.
I thought they were always plural. Scroll down a bit on this page for an example of the routes generated by resources :photos
Whether you're GETting a single resource or POSTing to the collection, you're still in the domain of photos. So, search the domain of photos given an id, POST a new photo to the domain of photos, etc.

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