Methodology question

Rails
1

Still learning, but it is getting easier by the minute :wink:

I have a bunch of controllers (that correspond to db tables) and
corresponding views. However, I want to use the views with
link_to_remote into divs on a page that is created as a “base” that is
loaded WITHOUT making any calls on the db. To this end I created a dud
controller, main, with a single empty method

def load
end

and a corresponding view that is the html “base”. This works fine, but
I wanted to check and see if there are any caveats against doing this
(using a seperate dud controller) or if there is a more “conventional”
way to go.

I could put the empty method into a real, existing controller, I just
figured “main/load” would be tidier…

2

I notice you cannot access another controller method from a view, eg.

:action => “othersec/list”

is no good; the action must belong to the corresponding controller

That being the case, I might as well just have one controller, “main”,
with methods like “list_that” and “list_this”, ie, there is not much
point in defining a controller for each table – all that is needed is
class definition in models/

However “what seems to be the case” to me is not necessarily the way
that it is – I’m worried I may diverge too much from anything
resembling Best Practices here, particularly since this means going

script/generate controller this
then erasing everything but the model definition (I tried erasing those
two, and creating one “main.rb” with all the classes in, but then there
is an error).

Anyone have any thoughts on this? After a bit of googling I found some
stuff about inheritance governing this – does that mean I should put
the methods I want globally accessible in
app/controllers/application_controller.rb?

3

2009/5/23 Mk 27 [email protected]

I notice you cannot access another controller method from a view, eg.

:action => “othersec/list”

is no good; the action must belong to the corresponding controller

Not sure I follow you here, you can certainly link to a different
controller
from a view, what is that you are trying to do?

Colin

4

Colin L. wrote:

Not sure I follow you here, you can certainly link to a different
controller
from a view, what is that you are trying to do?

Colin

That is what I am trying to do, perhaps this is a syntax problem.

If I have three controllers under app/, “aone”, “atwo”, “athree”, all of
them have a method “list”, in the view for aone I want to call the list
method from atwo, so I tried

:action => “atwo/list”

This is a no go – what’s the proper syntax?

Also (another sort of related syntax question), how can I use a
parameter with the methods? Here’s a line which works in a view:

  • { :action => "list_albums" }) %>">

    and here is one which returns “undefined local variable or method
    `url’”, the only difference being I tried to pass a parameter via the
    action

  • { :action => "list_albums(#{artist.id})" }) %>"> ^ oh no!

    I tried this a few different ways and am about to try a few more :wink: Is
    it just the quoting, or what?

    • 5

    that should should :controller => ‘atwo’, :action => ‘list’

    -Mike

    6

    Just to clarify, artist.id would be defined in the context (since the
    text content of the

  • is artist.name).

    I suppose I should order a book on this stuff ASAP…

    • 7

    2009/5/23 Mike R. [email protected]

    from a view, what is that you are trying to do?

    action

    There is a clue in the error message that says that it does not like
    url.
    The reason is that it should be :url. I don’t know whether the rest of
    it
    is correct or not.

    Colin

    8

    Mike R. wrote:

    that should should :controller => ‘atwo’, :action => ‘list’

    -Mike

    Thanks!