# Restful rails: when simple just isn't enough **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [November 26, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/restful-rails-when-simple-just-isnt-enough/77324 "2006-11-26T23:50:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stevedogers)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/restful-rails-when-simple-just-isnt-enough/77324/1 "2006-11-26T23:50:23Z")
Hi, I’ve read the blogs, I’ve seen the Peepcode screencast, and I even read the beta book from the Pragmatic guys - still, I fail to understand how REST can simplify my controllers beyond the CRUD operations. Example: I got a simple article object. I got want to get the most recent articles, that’s not supported by the CRUD stuff, so I add: map.resources :articles, :collection =\> { :recent =\> :get } … in my routes. Now say I want to flag some of those articles as ‘enabled/disabled’ or ‘featured/not featured’: map.resources :articles, :member =\> { :featured =\> :put, :enabled =\> :put } I can think of about 39303049 different ‘methods’ I need to call in this fashion. Does it mean I have to add that many ‘custom’ resource routes to my route file, just to then have to declare them as part of my controllers? In which case, short if simplifying the CRUD action, REST didn’t help simplify my controller at all? I know I’m missing something, the question is, what 😃 If you guys could point me in the right direction, that would be great… ---
**Author:** ![stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stevedogers)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 1:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/restful-rails-when-simple-just-isnt-enough/77324/2 "2006-11-27T01:26:16Z")
On Nov 26, 2006, at 4:50 PM, Steve D. wrote: > … in my routes. Now say I want to flag some of those articles as > ‘enabled/disabled’ or ‘featured/not featured’: > > map.resources :articles, :member =\> { :featured =\> :put, :enabled =\> > :put } > [snip] Okay, first up is a disclaimer. I’m still getting my feet wet with REST so this might be totally wrong. Proceed at your own risk. When looking at your collection from these other perspectives (recent = time, status = enabled/disabled/featured/etc), these other perspectives become controllers. GET [example.com/recent](http://example.com/recent) This returns some default timespan of recent articles. GET [example.com/recent/45](http://example.com/recent/45) This returns articles from the past 45 days. Or maybe you just take additional parameters in to your regular #show method. GET [example.com/articles?begin=today&end=45](http://example.com/articles?begin=today&end=45) This might behave just like the #recent/45 example above. I highly recommend looking at the articles on wikipedia [1] and RestWiki [2] to understand how to apply REST principles. The REST approach will likely result in more controllers, but each controller will be much simpler to implement and test. If you are still stuck in the mode that says there is a 1:1 relationship between controllers and models then you might be in for a rough ride. cr [1] [Representational state transfer - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer) [2] [http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?FrontPage](http://rest.blueoxen.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?FrontPage) ---
**Author:** ![stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stevedogers)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 12:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/restful-rails-when-simple-just-isnt-enough/77324/3 "2006-11-27T12:57:09Z")
Thank you! Can anyone confirm Chuck’s highlights? I get this feeling RESTful application are still very much bleeding edge… ---
**Author:** ![stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stevedogers)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 1:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/restful-rails-when-simple-just-isnt-enough/77324/4 "2006-11-27T13:13:25Z")
Steve D. wrote: > Thank you! > > Can anyone confirm Chuck’s highlights? I get this feeling RESTful > application are still very much bleeding edge… Like Chuck, I’m no REST expert, but am halfway through refactoring an app to be RESTful, and it’s improving it no end. The structure is stronger, the reasoning better, and the whole thing is a lot less messy. In all my RESTful controllers I’m set up the :index action to display the 20 most recent items, and if I need to filter it, perhaps by restricting them to items that are tagged with “foo”, I simply pass a :tag =\> “foo” parameter along with the request. It’s trivial if there’s just one possible filter, not that much more difficult using case…when with using more than one possible one. I’ve only needed to resort to additional actions in a couple of controllers (and it’s a fairly big app), and in those it’s been for specific destructive actions, e.g. disapproving an item. HTH CT ---
**Author:** ![stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stevedogers)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 8:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/restful-rails-when-simple-just-isnt-enough/77324/5 "2006-11-27T20:40:32Z")
On 11/26/06, Steve D. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > to my route file, just to then have to declare them as part of my > controllers? In which case, short if simplifying the CRUD action, REST > didn’t help simplify my controller at all? Could you not just pass these “methods” during a post update? These ‘methods’ really sound like state information about the object that need to be updated. It sounds overkill and redundant to add specialized methods for performing simple state updates. If you want to display or filter the displayed result by certain state information you can pass them as parameters to either the index function [http://example.com/articles?enabled=true](http://example.com/articles?enabled=true), etc. Alternatively if you wish you could create a custom :member function in the routes when you wish to perform very selective filtering. Ie. recent 45 days of articles, etc. Rest works well in some cases but possibly not in every case. If its causing you more grief than its worth than don’t bother. I’ve started developing a ‘rest’ app and I must admit that it does simplify my life and removes a lot of the redundant code/views. Adam ---
**Author:** ![stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stevedogers)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2006, 1:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/restful-rails-when-simple-just-isnt-enough/77324/6 "2006-11-28T13:06:46Z")
Your collection methods are fine - think of collection actions as alternative GET requests. This is still the R part of CRUD. You may want to consider using query string parameters instead though. For your update methods - these could all be part of a single update operation. ---
**Author:** ![stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@stevedogers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/stevedogers)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 9:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/restful-rails-when-simple-just-isnt-enough/77324/7 "2006-11-27T21:44:41Z")
On 11/27/06, Adam R. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > fashion. Does it mean I have to add that many ‘custom’ resource routes > > to my route file, just to then have to declare them as part of my > > controllers? In which case, short if simplifying the CRUD action, REST > > didn’t help simplify my controller at all? > > Could you not just pass these “methods” during a post update? These > ‘methods’ really sound like state information about the object that need to > be updated. It sounds overkill and redundant to add specialized methods > for performing simple state updates. Not only could he, but that’s what he SHOULD do. He’s simply updating the attributes of a resource, which is what HTTP PUT is for. Pat