My first app. How should I approach this association thing?

Rails
1

Hi people. I’m a newbie so bare with me :stuck_out_tongue:

This is my first rails application: https://github.com/Agis-/ehm . It’s
an
app where visitors have the ability to see Offers submitted from
Vendors.
These Offers also belong to Categories. So Offers, Vendors and
Categories
are the models & resources in my application.

Until now I implemented these pages:

and now the important part: I want in the vendor pages
(app.com/v/) where all the Vendor’s offers are listed, to
have a
sidemenu which will have all the Vendor’s offers grouped by categories.
So
the visitor will be able not only to see all the Offers from Vendor A,
but
all the Offers from Vendor A and in Category A, B or C.

Thing is, I don’t know how to generally approach this issue. How should
I
route this? Should I add a sidebar partial template that will render the
category menu? Should the routes be like
app.com/v//c/?
or maybe I should use query parameters like
app.com/v/?category=?

What would be the Rails way of doing this?

Thanks:D

2

Also, what about the controllers? Would I need all of them? Right now I
have 3.

I’m just thinking now, maybe the whole approach (following the RESTful
architecture) isn’t the best choice for my app. Could I maybe do
something
like Asbury Park Press NJ | Jersey Shore & New Jersey News.

3

Since you are very new to Rails, I would suggest that you take a an hour
or
two to go through a three step approach to gather the knowledge you’ll
need
to answer this yourself.

  1. Use the Rails scaffolding feature to build out the models,
    controllers,
    views and tests for each of your models. A lot of this code you will
    end
    up not using and/or modifying heavily, but it gives you a place to start
    and should help you to get more comfortable with the “restful” approach.
    (
    Getting Started with Rails — Ruby on Rails Guides
    )
  2. Identify the ActiveRecord relationships you will need between your
    models. Implement those model relationships. (
    Active Record Associations — Ruby on Rails Guides)
    Use IRB to build some records and test model relationships. (
    The Rails Command Line — Ruby on Rails Guides )
    Establish
    queries/scopes in your models, and test them also in IRB. (
    Active Record Query Interface — Ruby on Rails Guides )
  3. Implement the routes and nesting that make sense now that your
    models
    and relationships are established. (
    Rails Routing from the Outside In — Ruby on Rails Guides ,
    #196 Nested Model Form Part 1 - RailsCasts) Based on
    the
    relationships/routing/nesting you implement, you will see what
    controllers
    and views you will need to build out.

When I am starting a new, complex project, I will oftentimes go through
this three step process two or three times, taking a slightly different
approach to the models, relationships, queries, and routes each time.
This
allows me to see where the advantages and disadvantages to each approach
pop-up. It is usually in this process where I end up answering the
types
of questions that you asked below.

My apologies if this seems a little elementary (and I did not explicitly
answer your questions,) but this is the approach I find useful with
Rails’
tools. Hope this helps.