# Modularising and DRYing up code

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/modularising-and-drying-up-code/152198>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 31, 2008, 4:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/modularising-and-drying-up-code/152198 "2008-10-31T04:55:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![spike](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@spike](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/spike)\
**Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 4:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/modularising-and-drying-up-code/152198/1 "2008-10-31T04:55:28Z")

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Hi there,

My company (and product) Spike@School (www.spikeatschool.co.nz) is  
basically a CMS for schools. It allows you to add pages, links, blah,  
and more complicated things like podcasts and staff profiles to the  
site. We developed it around a central core called  
component\_instances. It’s basically an ordered tree structure (which  
we’re aching to convert to a nested set, but that’s another story).  
The tree is polymorphic so you can add a Page node anywhere in the  
tree (for example).

That’s all well and good, but as time goes on, schools ask for these  
things called e-Portfolios which are basically mashups of things like  
pages, lists of links, embedded content, la de dah. The problem is,  
the interface where a student can add new pages, links etc… to their  
e-portfolio is slightly different to the interface that a teacher  
would use to add pages to the general site tree. We also have these  
things called Learning Caves which are basically private areas where  
students and teachers can collaborate. Again, they’re using pages,  
links etc… and again we’re duplicating some code. In the Learning  
Caves example we are using the same models which is good, we’re also  
using some of the same view and controller code for the teachers view  
(as the input dialogues are basically the same for them). We did  
however need to copy the code and modify it ever so slightly for the  
students end (they have a different template, permissions structure  
etc…). This leads me to the question:

What is the best way to abstract these things to a modular format?

I’ve thought of using plugins, but they don’t seem to go to the  
controller level. I’ve also tried abstracting the controller code to  
the lib directory and including this in the controllers where  
necessary (with lots of conditional workaround for certain differences  
in each use case for the module). We call the common view code as a  
partial from a messy location (usually the back-end view area since  
that would usually have been written first). Anyway, the point is, I  
feel like i’m flailing around trying to fit this round peg into a  
square Rails hole. Has anyone else come by this problem with larger  
projects? Are there plugins around to handle this?

I appreciate that this is quite an abstract problem and that the only  
answer might be a hard to swallow one, but we’ll see 🙂

Cheers,

Brendon