# Views in one controller reaching out to other controllers (b **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 25, 2006, 1:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704 "2006-07-25T01:18:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dewie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 1:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704/1 "2006-07-25T01:18:20Z")
Hello all. For the purpose of my question, let’s imagine we’re building some search functionality. You’re a sales person (you poor sap). And you’re hanging out in the SalesCenterController. You need to do a search for available productions; you’ve decided to be cool and use Ajax. Do you… a) Make a remote call to an action in your current controller (e.g. SalesCenterController#search\_productions) b) Make a remote call to a separate controller for the necessary search functionality (e.g. ProductionsController#search) Thoughts? - Rabbit ---
**Author:** ![dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dewie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 2:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704/2 "2006-07-25T02:25:00Z")
Factor out the common search code into a method, put it in application.rb, and call it from each controller that needs it. ``` - dan ``` – Dan K. [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) [http://www.dankohn.com/](http://www.dankohn.com/)tel:+1-415-233-1000 ---
**Author:** ![dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dewie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704/3 "2006-07-25T02:41:14Z")
Dan K. wrote: > Factor out the common search code into a method, put it in > application.rb, and call it from each controller that needs it. > > ``` > - dan > > ``` > > – > Dan K. [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > [http://www.dankohn.com/](http://www.dankohn.com/)tel:+1-415-233-1000 Dan, Do you by chance have an example of this that works with pagination? When I do a custom search I get a pagination error when I try to page to the next set of items. Rabbit (Daniel), You working on a CRM app? If so, would love to touch bases with you and determine if we can trade any functionality. I have a crm app tailored a little to a specific industry but am sure there are common elements. Thanks, Michael ---
**Author:** ![dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dewie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 2:56am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704/4 "2006-07-25T02:56:43Z")
Hmm… that’s a possibility. However, the searching itself is trivial… @people = Person.fulltext\_search(params[:query]) There’s not a whole lot to factor out. Maybe my example is too specific. I think it would help if I could get a sense of what other people are doing (or would do) in a given situation. Take these for example… 1. Would you let a view rendered by controller A reach out to controller B? 2. Regarding partials, say you have at least two places in your application where you can search for customers. If the views presented are identical in each place, where should that view be stored? 3. Imagine you have a controller called People. In controller B you determine you need to do a search for people. Would you add a method to controller B or call out to the search method in the people controller? Obviously there’s more than one way to do it; and I’m stumbling over all those choices. Help! 🙂 - Rabbit * * * ---
**Author:** ![dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dewie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 4:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704/5 "2006-07-25T04:02:38Z")
I think your issue here may be that you’re assuming that controllers should only work with one model. There’s no such expectation. > 1. Would you let a view rendered by controller A reach out to > controller B? Definitely not. Views call to one and only one controller. > 1. Regarding partials, say you have at least two places in your > application where you can search for customers. If the views > presented are identical in each place, where should that view be > stored? Put the partial in views/shared. > 1. Imagine you have a controller called People. In controller B you > determine you need to do a search for people. Would you add a > method to controller B or call out to the search method in the > people controller? Feel free to do as many searches of as many different models as you want in a controller. Whatever you need to populate the view. But having a controller call another one is just confusing things for no reason. Factor out the common search code into a method, put it in application.rb, and call it from each controller that needs it. ``` - dan ``` ---
**Author:** ![dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dewie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 3:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704/6 "2006-07-25T03:04:55Z")
Rabbit, My answers to your questions (which may be different than what others say so let’s see): 1. Yes. I would let it “reach out”. 2. In my opinion, the view shoud be stored with the proper controller from which the view is coming. I do this a lot with children records. For example, I have a list of activities that can show up under orders, leads or activities in itself. In my activity controller, I have a “list” view which calls a partial "\_activity\_list.rhtml. From all other controllers that show a list of activities, I call the “\_activity\_list.rhtml” partial. This allows the view to maintain a consistent look and feel across the entire application and reduce duplication. It also allows the view to be in the proper “organizational” structure of where I think it should be. As an example, from my lead controller, I do something like this: \<%= render( :partial =\> “activity/activity\_list” ) %\> 1. I would call out the search method in People, unless you have it in the application specific form like Dan pointed out. I suspect you would then have to pass in the model/action anyway so that it knew which model to query. Let’s hope I’m doing it right! 🙂 It certainly works for our application. Regards, Michael ---
**Author:** ![dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dewie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 4:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704/7 "2006-07-25T04:34:53Z")
Community, As you can see, Dan’s response went completely against mine! Am I doing things completely wrong? I can undestand point number one - a view belonging to one and only one controller. I may have misused this to some degree. An example where I have “reached out” to another controller is when I’m on a lead and I want to convert it to an order. I call the order controller where I guess I could call the lead controller and have a new order created from it. However, most concerning to me is item two regarding views that may be reused in many different places but that pertain to a specific controller. For example, I would expect things like header/footer/nav menu’s/etc… to go into shared. But if I have a partial that is specific to a particular controller and model then I think that partial should go into the views for relating to the controller/model to which it belongs, even though it is used by many different “shared” views. In my example, I have a list of activities that show up in many different places of the application. Am I wrong to have that partial under the activities views? Should it be moved to shared? Please advise! I’m definitely looking for “best practices” and also to understand a little of the logic if I am incorrect in my use of partials. Thanks, Michael ---
**Author:** ![dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dewie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 6:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704/8 "2006-07-25T06:00:50Z")
I could certainly be wrong as well. > I can undestand point number one - a view belonging to one and only > one > controller. I may have misused this to some degree. An example > where I > have “reached out” to another controller is when I’m on a lead and I > want to convert it to an order. I call the order controller where I > guess I could call the lead controller and have a new order created > from > it. I guess it depends on what you mean by “reached out”. Think of scaffolding, where the edit.rhtml (which is populated by edit\_controller.rb) submits its form to update. Update then decides whether to send the user back to edit or show. This allows you to reach across controllers. So, it’s completely reasonable for a page to be generated with the edit controller, have it’s submission processed by the update controller, and then be sent to the show controller. But one controller is always in charge. > views? Should it be moved to shared? > I put partials under the view of the relevant controller if only (or > mainly) methods of that controller use it. But if a partial is > shared by multiple controllers (which is what I assume the original > poster meant when he said “two places in your application”, then > views/shared seems like a good choice. To quote AWDWR v2beta5, page > 496: “[T]o share partials across controllers… [t]he convention > among Rails applications is to store these shared partials in a > subdirectory of app/views called shared” ``` - dan ``` – Dan K. [mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) [http://www.dankohn.com/](http://www.dankohn.com/)tel:+1-415-233-1000 ---
**Author:** ![dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@dewie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dewie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 9:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/views-in-one-controller-reaching-out-to-other-controllers-b/99704/9 "2006-07-25T09:05:52Z")
“I think your issue here may be that you’re assuming that controllers should only work with one model. There’s no such expectation. … Whatever you need to populate the view.” You’re dead on. DHH’s keynote about a controller’s goal in life is to be simplified to the point where all it’s doing is CRUD rests heavy on my shoulders. I understand the idea and drive behind modeling relationships in addition to objects, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem possible. (Possible, that is, to reduce everything in a controller to CRUD – example: where does a search function belong?) Anyway, thanks much for the guidance, Dan. I appreciate it. 🙂 - Rabbit * * *