Dunno yet if I consider this a best practice or an abomination but here is what I came up with when tackling the same problem.
My reasoning is that the site was providing some specified functionality (which doesn't really matter for this discussion) + a bunch of information about the organisation itself (about us, contact, FAQ, homepage blurb, whatever). Since all that data was really related to the organisation, an Organisation model seemed reasonable with each of those things as attributes. Here is the model:
class Organisation < ActiveRecord::Base
...validations stuff...
def self.attrs_regex
Regexp.new(self.attrs.join("|"))
end
def self.attrs
self.column_names.reject{|name| name =~ /id|created_at|updated_at/}
end
end
Then I use the attrs class method to generate routes based on the columns. This is in my routes.rb:
Organisation.attrs.each do |attr|
get "#{attr}" => "organisation##{attr}", :as => attr.to_sym
get "#{attr}/edit" => "organisation#edit", :as => "#{attr}_edit".to_sym, :defaults => { :attribute => attr }
post "#{attr}" => "organisation#update", :as => :organisation_update, :defaults => { :attribute => attr}, :constraints => Organisation.attrs_regex
end
The controller gets a little weird and I am not thrilled with the code here but here it is anyway. I need to make sure the attribute is set and available to the views so I can do the right thing there so I set it in the application controller:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
protect_from_forgery
before_filter :set_attribute
def set_attribute
@attribute = action_name.parameterize
end
end
For the organisation controller I just set the @organisation variable to be the first and only row in the database in the before_filter and then let Rails do its usual magic of calling the method, failing, and rendering a view of the same name. The edit action just uses one view file to edit all the different attributes:
class OrganisationController < ApplicationController
before_filter :set_organisation
def edit
authorize! :edit, @organisation
@attribute = params[:attribute].parameterize
end
def update
authorize! :update, @organisation
@attribute = params[:attribute]
respond_to do |format|
if @organisation.update_attributes(params[:organisation])
format.html do
redirect_to "/#{@attribute}", notice: t('successful_update')
end
format.json { head :ok }
else
format.html { render action: "edit" }
end
end
end
private
def set_organisation
@organisation = Organisation.first
end
end
So that is where I ended up. Like you I hit up SO to tap into the seething mass of genius here but ended up with disappointing results. If there is something better out there I am still hoping to find it.
What I like about what I did is that routes are automatically generated based on the structure of the organisation table.
What I don't like about what I did is that routes automatically generated based on the structure of the organisation table.
I know I will pay for that design decision when I have to deal with i18n routing and there are probably a thousand other reasons that this is a bad idea that I have yet to discover but for the moment I have a happy client.
In the end this is not a suggestion that you should do this, but I am hoping to give you more than I got so you can advance your thinking on this and hopefully end up a little closer to that best practice.
