Controller and action design patterns

Rails
1

I’m very new to rails and don’t want to get started in the wrong
direction.

My problem is that I don’t know how I should structure my controllers
and actions. Is there a general rule for what is an action and what is a
controller? For example should I start off by creating a controller for
each page I have or do I create a controller for every table in the
database?

2

You should read up on Rails before proceding. It’s not something you
just
“jump into”. Get the Agile Web D. book and work through it.
There
is a ton of good information there.

Generally, a contorller is designed to handle all requests for a
specific
part of your application. You could have only one controller for a very
simple application, and you could have lots for a very complex
application.
It depends entirely on how you want to manage your code. I would not do
one
controller per page… I might consider doing one controller per table
(which is what you get if you do script/generate scaffold.

As you become more experienced, you’ll begin to understand where your
controller boundaries are. Good luck!

3

If you’re just starting out, consider a controller a collection of
related actions. Often, you’ll find that a controller is tied to a
model, with actions for listing, reading, creating, deleting and editing
entries. A controller might also handle related models (ie. a
blog_controller might also handle comments, categories and tags in
addition to blog posts). Furthermore, a controller might not be related
to a specific model at all. For instance: you might have a controller
named Dashboard that provides an overview of the app.

Here’s a couple of things to have in mind:

  • Don’t repeat yourself. Helpers and protected methods in a controller
    are shared across all it’s actions and views.
  • Think of the controller as a context for the action. Ie, you might
    want to see a blog post in a different way in the Admin controller
    compared to the Blog controller.