# How to make RESTful namespaced controllers

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-restful-namespaced-controllers/68649>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [September 14, 2006, 6:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-restful-namespaced-controllers/68649 "2006-09-14T06:28:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/53a042/32.png) [@janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janovetz)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2006, 6:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-restful-namespaced-controllers/68649/1 "2006-09-14T06:28:01Z")

</div>

I looked all over for a way to use RESTful Rail with module namespaced  
controllers but everything that I read said that I wasn’t possible. I  
figured out a way to do it so I thought that I would post it here for  
people like me who are looking. First, though, I want to give my  
thoughts about when would be a good time to use namespaces.

I am really interested in what Scott R. said about refactoring to  
rest:

“A big part of that redundancy was in having an Admin module, which  
quickly proved unnecessary. Instead, I just use before\_filters to  
protect certain actions.”

“I had gotten into the habit of unthinkingly creating an admin module  
at the start of every new Rails project, and I now think it’s  
unnecessary much of the time.”

[http://scottraymond.net/2006/7/20/refactoring-to-rest](http://scottraymond.net/2006/7/20/refactoring-to-rest)

I think that one of the best things about the REST movement is that it  
encourages us to think about what we are doing and how we model things  
rather than just doing what we have always been doing. In most cases I  
think that namespaces are unnecessary and we would be better served by  
using things like before\_filters.

However, in the application I am working on, I have several different  
types of users that all have access to the same resources, but they  
have different displays and most importantly different workflows. I  
could do it all in one giant controller with a lot of conditionals to  
cater to the different workflows, this is where I think namespaces  
make the most sense.

I am interested if anyone has any other solutions to handling this  
type of situation. I know that module namespaced controllers have  
minor problems like interference between controllers and modules with  
the same name, but I am not really interested in the problems. I am  
interested in other solutions.

Now, how to make RESTful module namespaced controllers:

Rails has built-in functionality to handle resource name conflicts  
that we can use to deal with controller namespaces.

If we have a model name Person and two controllers that operate on  
this resource name PeopleController and Admin::PeopleController, we  
can write the following routes in the routes.rb file:

map.resources :people  
map.resources :people, :path\_prefix =\> ‘admin’, :controller =\>  
‘admin/people’, :name\_prefix =\> ‘admin\_’

This will create two sets of named routes, one for each controller. We  
just have to make sure that we use the right named route in the right  
place:

admin\_person\_url(@person)

or

person\_url(@person)

I tested this using the crud 2 generator and it worked great. You just  
have to make sure that you replace all of the named routes that it  
creates by default. It would be nice if the generator actually  
supported namespaces, though. Maybe I will change it to do that one of  
these days.

-Jake

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/53a042/32.png) [@janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janovetz)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2007, 5:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-restful-namespaced-controllers/68649/2 "2007-02-02T05:17:21Z")

</div>

I guess it was all there in the documentation. Just hard to digest and  
understand how it all comes together. Thank you so much for the  
explanation, Jake! This is exactly what I was looking for. Answered all  
of my questions! 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/53a042/32.png) [@janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janovetz)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2007, 3:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-restful-namespaced-controllers/68649/3 "2007-02-22T15:05:44Z")

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I have a problem with Rails 1.2.2:

1. create a rails app.
2. script/generate scaffold\_resource Admin::User name:string  
(I has to create the layout/admin dir by hand and run the command  
once more)
3. rake db:migrate (after creating the database of cource)
4. map.resources :users, :path\_prefix =\> ‘admin’, :controller  
=\>‘admin/users’, :name\_prefix =\> ‘admin\_’
5. script/console

> > Admin::User  
> > =\> Admin::User
> 
> > Admin::User.find(:all)  
> > ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: Mysql::Error: #42S02Table  
> > ‘db\_dev.users’ doesn’t exist: SELECT \* users
> 
> >

So has anybody an idea why the table ‘admin\_users’ was created  
correctly,  
but the table ‘users’ is accessed by Admin::User.find(:all)?

Thanks in advance,  
Stefan

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/53a042/32.png) [@janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janovetz)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2007, 3:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-restful-namespaced-controllers/68649/4 "2007-02-22T15:17:53Z")

</div>

Or do I really have to specify the table name in the model to fix it:

class Admin::User \< ActiveRecord::Base  
set\_table\_name :admin\_users  
end

Cheers,  
Stefan

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/53a042/32.png) [@janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janovetz)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2007, 4:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-restful-namespaced-controllers/68649/5 "2007-02-22T16:43:26Z")

</div>

Another problem:

After setting the table name at least something is workink, but:

'admin\_user\_path(user) is known, but ‘edit\_admin\_user\_path(user)’ and  
‘new\_admin\_user\_path’ are unknown, instead ‘edit\_user\_path(user)’  
and ‘new\_user\_path’ were created (but of cource not correctly working).

Is Rails 1.2.2 that buggy when it comes to using module namespace or  
am I missing something in routes.rb or…???

What’s going on? Maybe nobody really cares about namespace in Rails!?  
Creating a big enterprise application in Rails without having namespaces  
doesn’t sounds like having fun, Ops…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/53a042/32.png) [@janovetz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janovetz)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2007, 6:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-make-restful-namespaced-controllers/68649/6 "2007-02-22T18:44:56Z")

</div>

Sorry, forget about my last mail, it’s not that bad! After dumping out  
some routing info on the console:

GET /admin/users/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“index”}  
GET /admin/users.:format/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“index”}  
POST /admin/users/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“create”}  
POST /admin/users.:format/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“create”}  
GET /admin/users/new/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“new”}  
GET /admin/users/new.:format/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“new”}  
GET /admin/users/:id;edit/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“edit”}  
GET /admin/users/:id.:format;edit/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“edit”}  
GET /admin/users/:id/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“show”}  
GET /admin/users/:id.:format/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“show”}  
PUT /admin/users/:id/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“update”}  
PUT /admin/users/:id.:format/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“update”}  
DELETE /admin/users/:id/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“destroy”}  
DELETE /admin/users/:id.:format/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“destroy”}  
formatted\_admin\_edit\_user: GET /admin/users/:id.:format;edit/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“edit”}  
admin\_edit\_user: GET /admin/users/:id;edit/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“edit”}  
formatted\_admin\_new\_user: GET /admin/users/new.:format/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“new”}  
admin\_new\_user: GET /admin/users/new/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“new”}  
formatted\_admin\_users: GET /admin/users.:format/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“index”}  
admin\_users: GET /admin/users/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“index”}  
formatted\_admin\_user: GET /admin/users/:id.:format/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“show”}  
admin\_user: GET /admin/users/:id/  
{:controller=\>“admin/users”, :action=\>“show”}

it was clear: My mistake, it should correctly be named:

admin\_user\_path(user)  
admin\_edit\_user\_path(user)  
admin\_new\_user\_path

Now so far it works, only the ‘set\_table\_name :admin\_users’ still bother  
me 😉

So happy railing with namespaced controllers,  
Stefan