Extending Routing

Rails
1

I am working on a CMS project and would like to extend how routing
works, however I have not done such deep magic in the past.
Specifically I would like to map the /*path/ glob to a function that
will return the controller, action and id based on a database lookup.
I have it working now, but I am using render_component to get it to
work.

Any thoughts?

The current routing table:

ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
map.connect ‘:controller/service.wsdl’, :action => ‘wsdl’
map.connect ‘:controller/:action/:id’
map.connect ‘*path’, :controller => ‘application’, :action =>
‘parse_path’
end

The current application controller:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
model :domain
attr_writer :root_node
attr_reader :root_node
before_filter { |c| c.root_node = Domain.find_by_name(c.request.host)
if c.root_node.nil? }

def parse_path

# Set the current object to the root node for the current domain
obj = root_node

# Set the default action to index
action = 'render_node'

# Loop through each path element
for path_item in params[:path]

  # Find the new path element in the children of the current node
  new_obj = obj.children.find_by_name(path_item)

  # If the new path element is not found
  if new_obj.nil?
    # Then set the current path element to the action
    action = path_item
    # and exit the loop
    break
  end

  # Make the child the current node
  obj = new_obj
end

@obj = obj
logger.info( "obj: " + @obj.to_s )

node_controller = obj.class.to_s.underscore
logger.info( "node controller :" + node_controller )

# Render the node and action
render_component  :controller => node_controller,
                  :action => action, :id => obj.id,
                  :obj => obj, :params => params

end
end

While it is not pretty and I fear will not scale real well, it works.

2

On 10/12/06, Jeffrey H. [email protected] wrote:

I had a look at Radiant CMS recently and was somewhat disappointed about
the
way they implemented everything. They just had to rewrite most of the
parts
concerning template and layout rendering. They even have their own
“controllers” (which they call behaviours). I think it’s a reasonable
solution on its own, but there isn’t much to borrow if you want to build
some small and cute CMS.

Anyway, take a look at Radiant’s implementation. Maybe you’ll find some
interesting points to start from.

If you are really about to extend rails routing, take a look at Jamis
Buck’s
articles on it:
http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2006/10/2/under-the-hood-rails-routing-dsl
http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2006/10/4/under-the-hood-route-recognition-in-rails

3

On 10/11/06, Jeffrey H. [email protected] wrote:

I am working on a CMS project and would like to extend how routing
works, however I have not done such deep magic in the past.
Specifically I would like to map the /*path/ glob to a function that
will return the controller, action and id based on a database lookup.
I have it working now, but I am using render_component to get it to
work.

That’s similar to what I’m doing in Mephisto, without the
render_component overhead (I just call a dispatch_* action in the same
controller). With page caching, the performance hit doesn’t really
matter.

–
Rick O.
http://weblog.techno-weenie.net
http://mephistoblog.com