Models and Controllers

Rails
1

When the generate script creates a model, it creates a subclass of
ActiveRecord. Is this to say that every table - even pure support tables
such as a table for state codes - should have a model?

And what is the relationship of models to controllers. It seems there’s
no problem with a controller handling several models, but is there a
rule of thumb on how these relationships should be laid out.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.
—Michael

2

If you use those tables why not creating model for quick and easy CRUD?

On Oct 6, 2006, at 7:44 PM, Michael S. wrote:

even pure support tables
such as a table for state codes - should have a model?

–
Emanuele T.
mob +39 329 29 56 995
icq 30 77 52 76
web mekdigital.com

3

When the generate script creates a model, it creates a subclass of
ActiveRecord. Is this to say that every table - even pure support tables
such as a table for state codes - should have a model?

No, on the contrary this is to say that every model is supposed to have
a persistency attached (simple case: 1 table).
The most common case of a table not having a model attached is the “join
table” in a habtm relationship.

And what is the relationship of models to controllers. It seems there’s
no problem with a controller handling several models, but is there a
rule of thumb on how these relationships should be laid out.

Rule of thumb? Difficult to say…

I would suggest: run away as soon as you can from the “scaffolding”
programming model.
It could give you the wrong feeling that you have a 1 to 1 relation
between models and controllers. Not all the applications are “model”
centric, you can have controllers not relaying on anything but a
“virtual” model (think, for instance, of a controller doing the
+,-,*,/,% operations on any couple of integers).

For a “blog” like application you want to have several controllers using
the same model (Authentication and Blog use Person) and models (like
Comment) not having their own controller.

mauro