CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-rails
lkartono
lkartono

Reputation: 2393

Rails need advice on best practice

I need advice with Rails best practices. Actually in my application, for my cars_controller and my contacts_controller I need to load datas (below) for both controllers in new, create, edit and update actions : 

@countries        = Country.all
@types            = Type.all
@departments      = Department.all
@models           = Model.all // This one is only needed on contacts_controller

Those gonna be populate into select box. Since I need to repeat it on each new, create, edit and update actions, I created a load_resource into my application_controller :

application_controller.rb

def load_resources
  @countries        = Country.all
  @types            = Type.all
  @departments      = Department.all
  @models           = Model.all // This one is only needed on contacts_controller
end

However, it really feel dirty to me as, what if I want to load other data for other controllers? I would like to know if there is best practicies for that?

I tried using a Presenter pattern but since those datas are not particularly attached to anything since they are just data in select box, it really didn't work.

Thanks for your help

Upvotes: 0

Views: 72

Answers (1)

Rajesh Kolappakam
Rajesh Kolappakam

Reputation: 2125

I can see two possible improvements, firstly you don't need to load the resource on every action, secondly you can use caching to improve performance.

Don't load resources on every action

Assuming your are following the standards REST conventions, if these resources are for your dropdowns, you don't need them in create and update. You only need them in new and edit, since only these two actions display a page to the user. create and update are the actions invoked by your form and would redirect to some other page.

Instead of adding it to your application_controller, I would just add a before_filter to your contacts_controller and cars_controller

contacts_controller.rb

before_filter :load_resources_for_dropdowns, :only => [:new, :edit]

def load_resource_for_dropdowns
  ....
end

Use Caching

Also, if you are concerned about the performance impact of loading the resources from the database, you can consider using caching for it. For example, if your countries list never changes, you can safely do the following:

country.rb

def get_all_cached
  Rails.cache.fetch('all_countries') { Country.all }
end

contacts_controller.rb

before_filter :load_resources_for_dropdowns, :only => [:new, :edit]

def load_resource_for_dropdowns
  @countries = Country.get_all_cached
end

If your countries does change, you can add a check to clear the cache whenever something changes:

country.rb

after_save :clear_cache

def clear_cache
  Rails.cache.delete('all_countries')
end

def get_all_cached
  Rails.cache.fetch('all_countries') { Country.all }
end

Upvotes: 3

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