# How to: Dynamic Pages

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-dynamic-pages/111607>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [August 9, 2007, 2:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-dynamic-pages/111607 "2007-08-09T02:21:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mario\_TSL](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Mario\_TSL](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mario_TSL)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 2:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-dynamic-pages/111607/1 "2007-08-09T02:21:11Z")

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I’ve seen a few people ask about creating dynamic pages. Usually, this  
comes into play with custom extensions whereby the goal is generate  
user-specific pages. That is, the page is different each time a person  
visits it.

I’m relatively new to Rails/Radiant/Ruby, but I am attempting to build a  
church site that presents dynamic content. I thought I’d make what I’ve  
learned available:

1. In the Radiant SiteController allow for sessions by commenting the  
following:

class SiteController \< ApplicationController  
#session :off

1. In your custom extension disable caching. I attempted to disable  
this in the environments/development.rb file (or others) however on  
successive page loads caching kicks back in. This is because this fact  
is soon forgotten… I’m not sure what causes this, but by adding the  
following to the “def activate” of my own custom extension, I make sure  
this fact is not forgotten.

#disable caching  
ResponseCache.defaults[:perform\_caching] = false

1. One reason I wanted to do this was to allow for flash messages (the  
Rails variety) to appear on the site when the user did some invalid  
action. I created a Radius “flash” tag to dump the flash message.

tag ‘flash’ do |tag|  
kind = tag.attr[‘kind’] || ‘notice’  
message = response.session[‘flash’][kind.to\_sym]  
html = []  
if message  
html \<\< “

”  
html \<\< message  
html \<\< “
”  
end  
html.join("\n")  
end

Then I thought better of this design. The problem with dynamic pages is  
that usually there are just tiny bits of information that are custom  
(user name, flash messages, etc.). When we make use of these custom  
bits in a common page layout, we are basically resigning to sacrifice  
caching if only to display these tiny customizations. Ugh.

Instead, I think it may be better to create custom pages handled by the  
controllers associated with your custom extension that handle certain  
url routes, avoiding Radiant altogether (I had been doing this anyway).  
In this way, only the pages that need to be dynamic are dynamic and  
Radiant continues to cache, to our benefit.

One issue was on the non-Radiant pages that the current username  
appeared in the upper left (with a logout link) and on Radiant pages  
they did not. It was inconsistent. It seemed silly to drop caching if  
only to display a username in the upper left. Instead, I am now  
thinking I should simply avoid displaying the username altogether, to  
maintain the consistency.

Also, in cases where I want to tell the user something in a flash  
message, I simply redirect\_to a custom view that is designed for  
fielding flash messages out of the context of a cached Radiant content  
page.

You could, of course, follow the steps I mention to allow for a more  
dynamic site; however, Radiant will have to do much more work rendering  
pages. Obviously, you could add some intelligence to when and where  
this kicks in. This is touchy and I’m not sure there’s a good way of  
handling this on Radiant generated pages. Remember, when you’re logged  
in, there are potentially dozens of others visiting the same pages.

Anyway, this is what I’ve learned. I’m still learning and would be glad  
to hear any criticisms/tips.

~Mario