Scaffold: What's the advantage of actions create/update?

Rails
1

Hi all

I’m quite unsure what’s the point to have a create and update action in
the Rails scaffolds… I guess the developers had good reason to
implement them, but I don’t really see the reason for them…

Why no just checking for get/post within the same new/edit method?

def new
unless request.post?
# do the normal “new” stuff
else
# do the stuff from the “create” method
end
end

def edit
unless request.post?
# do the normal “edit” stuff
else
# do the stuff from the “update” method
end
end

Anybody can tell me what’s the big advantage of splitting the above
methods into new/create and edit/update methods?

Thanks a lot,
Josh

2

Because the code is much more readable when it’s separated out into
different methods and allow routing to direct the request to the
appropriate method based on post/get.

The way you described above would work but the way the scaffold
generator is creating is it to have each method be as simple as
possible. I don’t see an advantage to putting them into one method,
any code you want them to share can be re-factored out into a before
filter which runs before each method

On Nov 21, 6:33 am, Joshua M. [email protected]

3

[email protected] wrote:

Because the code is much more readable when it’s separated out into
different methods and allow routing to direct the request to the
appropriate method based on post/get.

The way you described above would work but the way the scaffold
generator is creating is it to have each method be as simple as
possible. I don’t see an advantage to putting them into one method,
any code you want them to share can be re-factored out into a before
filter which runs before each method

On Nov 21, 6:33 am, Joshua M. [email protected]

But how to “DRY” with the views? Both views (edit.html.erb and
new.html.erb) seem to contain similar code.
Shall I use something like a _form.html.erb ?
Or shall I render only one view in the controller?

TIA,
Martin

4

Oh, and yeah, you should use a _form.rhtml.erb as long as the forms are
the same ones. :slight_smile:

5

But how to “DRY” with the views? Both views (edit.html.erb and
new.html.erb) seem to contain similar code.
Shall I use something like a _form.html.erb ?
Or shall I render only one view in the controller?

TIA,
Martin

They seem as long as it’s only basic functionality. But the more complex
a project becomes, the more the new and edit views will differ, so don’t
“over-DRY” a project before it represents all your needs. Elsewise you
may come to a point where you “un-DRY” code you have wasted hours to
“DRY” before.