Ruby on Rails 3 Tiered Link Program

Question

My app is a web forum. Root page is a list of user-submitted categories. I click one and it links to a list of user-submitted posts about that category. I click a post and it links to a list of comments about that post. Those are the 3 tiers.

CATEGORIES INDEX This is a list of clickable categories

<% @categories.each do |category| %>
<%= link_to category.title, category %>
<% end %>

CATEGORIES SHOW I clicked a category, now I'm here looking at a list of posts

<%= render :partial => @category.posts %>
<% end %>

_POSTS The posts are rendered from this here partial

<%= div_for(post) do %>
<%= link_to post.body, Post  %>

Clicking that post link takes me to POSTS INDEX.

I'm not sure if this is a desirable flow of a Rails app. It seems odd to go from Categories, to Posts, to Comments using Categories_Index, Categories_Show, and Posts_Index, respectively. I don't know how to display or submit comments from this POSTS INDEX. @comments.each do |comments| provides an error and so does the render: partial method. I can not use the same methods for Comments that I used for Categories and Posts.

MODELS Models are complete with has_many, belongs_to, etc.

CATEGORIES CONTROLLER def index @categories = Category.all end def create @category = current_user.categories.build(categories_params) end

POSTS CONTROLLER def create @category = Category.find(params[:category_id]) @post = @category.posts.new(post_params)

COMMENTS CONTROLLER def index @subcomments = Subcomment.all end def create @subcomment = current_user.subcomments.build(subcomment_params) end

ROUTES

Rails.application.routes.draw do
resources :comments

resources :posts
devise_for :users
resources :categories do

resources :posts do
end
resources :comments
end
root "categories#index"

I successfully added posts to categories. How can I add comments to posts? Is my approach correct?

Answer 1

I assumed you have the following Model Relationships:

Model Category

has_many :posts

Model Post

has_many :comments
belongs_to :category

Model Comment

belongs_to :post

You are asking "How can I add comments to posts?"

In the page where you render all POSTS data, you should USE posts ID as you main parameter.

So, meaning you should have post_id column/field inside Comments Table.

After saving the comments data, usually like [title, message, date ....].

In your Post Controller, you can get comments like:

// multiple Posts data
@posts = Post.all
@post.each do |post|
 post.comments
 ...
end

//single Post

@post = Post.first // or Post.find(:id => params[:post_id])
@post.comments

If you are sending data using form, just put some hidden text field,

setting the name & value:

name="post_id" 
// or something like:
name="comment[:post_id]"     
//depends on how you constract the form. 

Then set the value:

value="<%= params[:post_id ]%>"

Finnally, you can get the value like getting the other comments_field names.

Usually you should have this in in config/routes.rb,

resources :commets

Then your FORM path is like:

<%= form_for @comment, :url => @comments_path %>

Your Comments Controller should have like:

def index
  ...
end

def show
  ...
end

def edit
  ...
end


def new
  @comment = Comment.new
end

def create
  @comment = Comment.create(comment_params)
  if @comment.save
    ....
    redirect_to comments_path
  else
    .....
  end
end

# For params permit in Rails 4 ^
def comment_params
   params.require(:comment).permit!
end