CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-rails
D. Drumpf
D. Drumpf

Reputation: 13

How to ignore type column for model in link_to helper

Let's say I have Pets and Cats. Cats are stored in the pets table with the value 'Cat' in the type column.

Let's say I create a link like this:

link_to 'My Pet', Pet.find(1)

This will generate a link using the pet_path as expected.

But then let's say I create a link like this:

link_to 'My Pet', Cat.find(1)

This will generate a link using the 'cat_path', which is smart, but not what I want because I only have/need a PetController.

Clearly, I can just use pet_path(Cat.find(1)) in the link_to, but I'm wondering if there is a more robust solution. What if I have Dogs, Birds, etc.? I don't want to have to remember to explicitly use pet_path every time.

How can I make sure that the second link will create a link with the pet_path moving forward? Is there a setting on the Cat model or the Pet model or something I can put in routes.rb to ensure this?

-edit-

There's some confusion over what I'm trying to achieve. I simply want to know how to make sure that a call to link_to with a Cat object will resolve to a pet_path instead of a cat_path. I'm not looking for a way to change how my table is set up. In an ideal situation, I wouldn't have to create a bunch of controllers for the different pet types either. I'd like to know whether there is a simple, elegant way to tell Rails to use the parent class for a model when determining the url helper.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 71

Answers (1)

SteveTurczyn
SteveTurczyn

Reputation: 36860

You could create custom routes either manually

get    'cats/:id' => 'pets#show'
put    'cats/:id' => 'pets#update'
delete 'cats/:id' => 'pets#destroy'
# etc etc
...

or using resources

resources :cats, controller: 'pet'

Slightly outside the scope of your question, but the create action could test the url request.original_url and know what kind of pet to create based on what path was called with the POST command.

Upvotes: 0

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