Rails, REST, and Routes

Rails
1

I am trying to figure out how to write a “slightly nested” RESTful route
to represent the following.

I have the concept of a Box. A Box may contain another Box. Here are the
URI’s and methods I wish to model – the first few are obvious…

GET /boxes
=> return index of boxes

GET /boxes/1
=> return box #1

POST /boxes
=> create a new box, returns URI of new box, eg

PUT /boxes/1
=> update box #1

DELETE /boxes/1
=> destroy box #1

The above are all well and good and handled fine by…

routes.rb:
map.resources :boxes

But I also want to map the following resources:

GET /boxes/1/boxes
=> Returns a list of boxes inside Box #1. NOTE: These URIs should be of
the form /boxes/#, NOT /boxes/1/boxes/#

POST /boxes/1/boxes
=> create a new box inside Box #1. The returned resource should be of
the form /boxes/#, NOT /boxes/1/boxes/#.

It’s these last two that I am having trouble with, trying to grok them.

Clues appreciated.

2

OK, I think I am getting closer:

I added the following to my routes:

map.resources :boxes
map.resources :boxes, :path_prefix => “/boxes/:parent_id”,
:name_prefix => “child_”

…still chugging…