CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsroutes
Salam.MSaif
Salam.MSaif

Reputation: 219

rails routing member and non-member nesting

Two quite similar routing settings really is confusing.

resources :authors do
  resources :books
end

and

resources :authors do
  member do
    resources :books
  end
end

As we all know, rails will generate the following routings :

writer_book   GET  /writers/:writer_id/books/:id(.:format)   books#show

and

book          GET    /writers/:id/books/:id(.:format)        books#show

How is this member option useful? One can just not using member option and set params[:writer_id] in books_controller and be done with it right? Does this will have a bad affect when the application gets bigger? What are the consequences?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 586

Answers (1)

max
max

Reputation: 102443

The member and collection methods are meant to add additional RESTful actions to resources

resources :writers do
  member do
    post :favorite
  end

  collection do
    get :unpublished
  end
end

They are not intended for nesting resources

# bad
resources :writers do
  member do
    resources :books
  end
end

# good
resources :writers do
  resources :books
end

What are the consequences?

Using member here will result in the route

GET    /writers/:id/books/:id(.:format)

Which means that the id param is ambigous! It could be either the id of the book or the author! Not good! Not using member would give us params[:writer_id] which we can use to fetch the parent record.

GET  /writers/:writer_id/books/:id(.:format)   books#show

See:

Upvotes: 2

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