CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubymodel-view-controller
Chris
Chris

Reputation: 6246

Controller helpers in ruby on rails

I am new to rails and am wondering if this is the best way to go about what I want to do.

I have a controller that creates entities.

Depending what gets submitted I want to either create a new entity from scratch, or copy an existing one.

So far I have

def create
  if(params[:copy])
    return copy_existing_entity params
  else
    return create_new_entity params
  end
end

So far this feels icky - should this be done differently?

Coming from java spring, I would just define separate handlers on the controller like so:

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST, params="submit=Action 1")
public ModelAndView action1(@RequestParam("selectedItemKey") String key) {
    ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("action1");
    //Business logic
    return mav;
}

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST, params="submit=Action 2")
public ModelAndView action2(@RequestParam("selectedItemKey") String key) {
    ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("action2");
    //Business logic
    return mav;
}

Does rails provide something like this or am I thinking about this the wrong way?

Thanks for any suggestions

Upvotes: 1

Views: 283

Answers (2)

nathanvda
nathanvda

Reputation: 50057

You could easily split it apart in two controller actions, but actually I do believe that in both cases you are creating a new Entity. So a POST :create is the good REST way. And if you have to create a new item filled up with the given attributes, or create a new item as a copy from another does not really matter imho.

Upvotes: 0

Marnen Laibow-Koser
Marnen Laibow-Koser

Reputation: 6337

This does seem kind of bad. First of all, why are you copying entities in the first place? What's your use case?

Second, you're probably putting the logic in the wrong place. You should probably either (1) have separate create and copy controller actions, or (2) pass params on to the model class and let it figure out whether it's creating or copying.

Upvotes: 1

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