# Newbie question on rails development **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [August 20, 2008, 10:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-rails-development/146421 "2008-08-20T22:10:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![codemax](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@codemax](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/codemax)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 10:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-rails-development/146421/1 "2008-08-20T22:10:15Z")
Hello, Maybe someone can point me in the right direction here: Say I’m developing a site where the main page is a sort of portal. On that page I’d like to display content from various controllers in my Rails application. For example: The top right of the screen would have a div to login utilizing my Session controller. The left side of the screen would have a div displaying content from an RSS feed controller. There would be a div containing page specific navigation tabs coming from a Navigation controller… you get the idea… So for example I’m thinking of having a Home or Welcome controller that displays views/home/index.html.erb. This inherits a layout from Application that gives me the top banner and footer for the site. So in the controller I’ll put some logic to decide which navigation div to display and the login div based on whether the user is logged in. So I’m in my Home controller. I’m working with def index utilizing views/home/index.html.erb and i want to display content from multiple different controllers. I’ve found lots of different ideas on google, but nothing rock solid. I’m on rails 2.1. Any direction would be much appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![codemax](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@codemax](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/codemax)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 10:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-rails-development/146421/2 "2008-08-20T22:35:05Z")
I personally tend to think that the Model View Controller (MVC) architecture provided by frameworks such as Rails is often misunderstood. It’s very easy to begin associating the three layers in a one-to-one-to-one relationship. But, that’s not really in the spirit of MVC. MVC is all about separating responsibilities. Models being responsible for persisting, calculating, and otherwise manipulating data, views responsible for presenting data to the users, and controllers to handling the “wiring” between the model and view. Nothing in MVC says anything about these being one-to-one. I place part of the blame for this on overuse of scaffolding. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with scaffolding, I just think it tends to promote this limited view of MVC. That being said: I would recommend deciding what pieces of view logic could be shared between your portal page and other views that may contain the same view code. Take that shared code and create a folder somewhere in your project structure to store partials contain these shared views (maybe app/views/shared). Then wherever you want to display that view use something like render :partial =\> “shared/\_my\_view” Just remember that your controller (say welcome\_controller.rb) is responsible for loading any data used in all these partials. For that I would recommend adding before\_filters to call a method to get all required data from your model. It might even be worth while to look into a “Presenter” pattern architecture for your welcome page. I’ll leave that as an exercise for you to research. Leif Elan wrote: > Hello, > > Maybe someone can point me in the right direction here: > > Say I’m developing a site where the main page is a sort of portal. On > that page I’d like to display content from various controllers in my > Rails application. > > For example: The top right of the screen would have a div to login > utilizing my Session controller. The left side of the screen would have > a div displaying content from an RSS feed controller. There would be a > div containing page specific navigation tabs coming from a Navigation > controller… you get the idea… > > So for example I’m thinking of having a Home or Welcome controller that > displays views/home/index.html.erb. This inherits a layout from > Application that gives me the top banner and footer for the site. So in > the controller I’ll put some logic to decide which navigation div to > display and the login div based on whether the user is logged in. > > So I’m in my Home controller. I’m working with def index utilizing > views/home/index.html.erb and i want to display content from multiple > different controllers. > > I’ve found lots of different ideas on google, but nothing rock solid. > I’m on rails 2.1. > > Any direction would be much appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![codemax](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@codemax](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/codemax)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 10:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/newbie-question-on-rails-development/146421/3 "2008-08-20T22:38:23Z")
> :partial =\> “shared/\_my\_view” > Correction: This should be “shared/my\_view” The partial filename starts > with the underscore, but you don’t include that when rendering it.