# Is having controller within controller bad practice? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [February 6, 2007, 9:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-having-controller-within-controller-bad-practice/84668 "2007-02-06T21:04:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/4bbf92/32.png) [@koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/koloa)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2007, 9:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-having-controller-within-controller-bad-practice/84668/1 "2007-02-06T21:04:20Z")
id like to have my site organized like this… [nj.com/southern/restaurants/italian/3](http://nj.com/southern/restaurants/italian/3) to have a url like that, it seems i would need a controller called southern with an internal controller restaurants where 3 is the id of the item. thoughts? suggestions? thanks. ---
**Author:** ![koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/4bbf92/32.png) [@koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/koloa)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2007, 9:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-having-controller-within-controller-bad-practice/84668/2 "2007-02-06T21:21:08Z")
That’s a perfectly valid URL, but it won’t mean ‘controller-in-controller’. Rails routes are incredibly powerful, try something like this (near the bottom to allow for other custom routes to take precendence). map.connect ‘:region/:controller/:action/:id’ Then your :controller/:action will get: params = { :region =\> ‘southern’, :id =\> 3 } Jason ---
**Author:** ![koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/4bbf92/32.png) [@koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/koloa)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2007, 9:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-having-controller-within-controller-bad-practice/84668/3 "2007-02-06T21:55:11Z")
On 2/6/07, koloa [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > the item. > > thoughts? suggestions? thanks. I’ve been trying to make my URLs even more search engine friendly lately. I’ve gotten away from using integer values in the URL for anything except the admin/non-public side of my applications. I’ve been using a :base\_name column combined that with some routing. In the model I do: before\_save :base\_name\_from\_title def base\_name\_from\_title self.base\_name = title.downcase.gsub( /\ and\ /, ‘-’ ). gsub( /\ on\ /, ‘-’ ). gsub( /[^a-zA-Z0-9-]/, ‘-’ ). gsub( /[-]+/, ‘-’ ). gsub( /[-]$/, ‘’ ). gsub( /^[-]/, ‘’ ) end “title” is whatever important wordy field I can pick out of a given model. It’s tough to pick sometimes especially if the field isn’t unique. I don’t have too many collisions on my personal blog though. Then I add a route: map.connect “category/:base\_name”, :controller =\> ‘category’, :action =\> ‘index’, :requirements =\> { :base\_name =\> /[\w-]+/ }, :base\_name =\> nil Then in the controller I look it up by base\_name instead of by id: Category.find( :first, :conditions =\> [ ‘base\_name = ?’, params[:base\_name] ] ) Don’t forget to index that text field! 🙂 Then my URLs look like: [http://destiney.com/category/programming-languages-ruby](http://destiney.com/category/programming-languages-ruby) – Greg D. [http://destiney.com/](http://destiney.com/) ---
**Author:** ![koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/4bbf92/32.png) [@koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/koloa)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2007, 10:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-having-controller-within-controller-bad-practice/84668/4 "2007-02-06T22:34:37Z")
hi Jason and Greg, Thanks for the post…question though… lets say my category field in a model can be ‘bbq’, ‘chinese’, ‘italian’…and id like to have the url [localhost.com/nj/bbq](http://localhost.com/nj/bbq) or [localhost.com/nj/southern/bbq](http://localhost.com/nj/southern/bbq) where nj is a controller, southern is a :region field and bbq is a :mcategory field,both are in my restaurant table… do i define like this? map.connect ‘:controller/:region/:mcategory’, :action =\> ‘view’ where view does the logic to determine what to pass in my find statement like def view NJ.find(:all, :conditions =\> "mcategory = ? and region = ?"params[:mcategory, params [:region]]) end the name ‘view’, will that be part of the url? i would prefer to have it like [localhost.com/nj/southern/bbq](http://localhost.com/nj/southern/bbq)… thanks. Greg, id really like the way you did your titles. Jason R. wrote: > That’s a perfectly valid URL, but it won’t mean > ‘controller-in-controller’. > Rails routes are incredibly powerful, try something like this (near the > bottom to allow for other custom routes to take precendence). > > map.connect ‘:region/:controller/:action/:id’ > > Then your :controller/:action will get: > > params = { > :region =\> ‘southern’, > :id =\> 3 > } > > Jason ---
**Author:** ![koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/4bbf92/32.png) [@koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/koloa)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2007, 10:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-having-controller-within-controller-bad-practice/84668/5 "2007-02-06T22:43:49Z")
whoa…i just tried it and it works and I can have the url that i like! wow that feature is really awesome… i was about to brute force like so many controllers within each other. now i have to rethink my naming conventions of functions. my brain hurts… thanks all for helping a noob. ---
**Author:** ![koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/4bbf92/32.png) [@koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/koloa)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2007, 11:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-having-controller-within-controller-bad-practice/84668/6 "2007-02-06T23:06:04Z")
another quick question… i used to have a long case stament like this… switch on 'food ’ category case ‘bbq’ … if state == nj do find all in nj for bbq if state == pa do find etc… case ‘chinese’ … if… … case … end switch on ‘something else’ category … … now because of the routes.rb power, i no longer need my case statement since i can have… map.connect ‘:state, :main\_category, :sub\_category’ so when presses a link on my site, it can go to a action that just has this? def getView @myObj = params;[:main\_category].capitalize.find(:all, :conditions [‘state = ? and subcategory = ?’, params[:state], params[:sub\_category]]) end Thansk! ---
**Author:** ![koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/4bbf92/32.png) [@koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/koloa)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2007, 11:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-having-controller-within-controller-bad-practice/84668/7 "2007-02-06T23:30:59Z")
Hey Jason, Thanks for explaining this to me! i think i am now going to rewrite my app again for the third time cutting the code i have maybe by 30%! Jason R. wrote: > Yep, it would work pretty much like that. Anything on the URL gets split > up > according to route definitions and placed into params. > > Jason ---
**Author:** ![koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/4bbf92/32.png) [@koloa](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/koloa)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2007, 11:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/is-having-controller-within-controller-bad-practice/84668/8 "2007-02-06T23:28:24Z")
Yep, it would work pretty much like that. Anything on the URL gets split up according to route definitions and placed into params. Jason