I’m in the process of converting a project to be RESTful (Rails 1.2.1)
but
am running into an issue I can’t quite solve (gracefully).
I have a list of Accounts that all need to be modified in the same way
(‘paused’) Using the restful routes, I can easily setup a route for
pausing
one:
map.resources :accounts, :member => { :pause => :put }
Though, I’m not sure how to setup a route to for multiple deletions.
This
is the only solution I’ve found, though it breaks a few REST
conventions:
map.pause_accounts ‘/accounts;pause’, :controller => “accounts”,
:action
=> “pause”
I can’t figure out how to force the named route to use the PUT method,
plus
I have to hack my ‘pause’ action to accept both a single Account id
(params[:id]) as well as multiple ids. I’m sure I’m missing something
simple. I can’t seem to find much helpful documentation or examples.
Anyone?
–
Ed
On 26-Jan-07, at 10:37 AM, Ed Hickey wrote:
a few REST conventions:
Anyone?
Ed, reading your requirement leads me to think that you are missing a
Model.
The Accounts likely are connected in your domain a belongs_to
relationship.
Although I don’t know more, having such a requirement would be an
indication to me that I’ve not modeled something important.
And having such a relationship would allow you to track the
transactional info that happens through such a group REST action.
Cheers,
Jodi
General Partner
The nNovation Group inc.
www.nnovation.ca/blog

On 1/26/07, Jodi S. [email protected] wrote:
Anyone?
Ed, reading your requirement leads me to think that you are missing a
Model.
The Accounts likely are connected in your domain a belongs_to
relationship.
Yes, the Accounts belong to User. Although, in this situation, I’m
working
on an admin interface. There is a screen of Accounts and the admin has
the
ability to manage them all in bulk.
Although I don’t know more, having such a requirement would be an
indication
to me that I’ve not modeled something important.
And having such a relationship would allow you to track the
transactional
info that happens through such a group REST action.
I’m not sure I follow you. Elaborate?
I’m running into many obstacles when changing my actions to work in the
RESTful environment. Mostly things that aren’t standard CRUD actions.
I
wish there was more documentation on the new routing and resource
features!
Thanks for the response.
Ed
Cheers,
The idea I was getting at that you likely haven’t modeled, we’ll call
that relationship “Transaction”.
So:
Users belong_to Account
Account has_many Transactions
but also Account has_many Transactions, and likely Users
(I likely am not talking the right language for your domain, but you
should be able to make the translation. You may even need an
AccountTransaction has_many to make this work).
So when changes are made to an account, you make it through a
Transaction model (and REST) If you have different types of bulk
Transactions, then you may need to pass a Transaction type.
so doing a REST on the Transaction model will act on all the Accounts
for that User - and when you record the Account changes, you can
track date/time and other items that can be used for auditing.
Generally REST really works when your data Model is rich (IMO), or
said another way, you can test your data model through a REST
implementation. Watching DHH’s presentation on his first thoughts on
implementing REST you’ll see him run into a wall, and then realize he
was missing a Model.
Cheers,
Jodi
General Partner
The nNovation Group inc.
www.nnovation.ca/blog
Ed,
If you would like more info on refactoring to REST, check out this
article by Scotty Raymond (IconBuffet, Blinksale, etc). It is
available on his site, but I have found this link to be more reliable
(doh!):
One of the things to note is how REST takes a different way of thinking
about your app. Where before you may have had a login action on some
account controller, now you might want an object to represent what a
login does. A login creates a session, so why not have a RESTful
sessions controller? That is what Scotty has done here. Most of the
time, if you are struggling with custom actions, it is because there is
some other way to represent the relationship than what you had before.
Just think in terms of “what am I creating here?”
Hope this helps,
Chris Beck
redmotive