CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railslayoutruby-on-rails-3
Misha Moroshko
Misha Moroshko

Reputation: 171321

Rails: Why the default application layout is not used?

I added @sort_by attribute to my controller, and initialized it's value like this:

class ProductsController < ApplicationController
  def initialize
    @sort_by = :shop_brand
  end
  ...
end

This caused the default application layout not to be used.

Why ?

What is the right way to add an attribute to a controller and initialize it ?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 381

Answers (1)

Jason Weathered
Jason Weathered

Reputation: 7801

Overriding the constructor is probably a bad idea (as you have found). You should use a before_filter:

class ProductsController < ApplicationController

  before_filter :set_defaults

  ...

  private

  def set_defaults
    @sort_by = :shop_brand
  end

end

However, it sounds like you want to keep state. The easiest is to store in the user's session which will automatically persist per user until they close the browser:

def set_defaults
  session[:sort_by] ||= :shop_brand
end

The other option would be to pass the current sort_by value in the URL. This is harder to implement though as you'll need to ensure each link or form copies the value over to the next request. The advantage of this however is the user could have multiple tabs open with different orderings and any bookmarked link would restore the same ordering next time. This is the approach that things like search engines would use.

Upvotes: 6

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