Always passing the same params

Yes, You can store all those variables in a session variable. Sessions allow you to store variables between requests, and give you 'state'.

In your controllers, you can assign a session variable:

def index   session[:my_first_setting] = nil end

def change_setting   session[:my_first_setting] = params[:setting1] end

def search   order = session[:my_first_setting] ? "updated_at DESC" : "updated_at ASC"   @results = Items.find(:all, :order => order) end

You can store almost any data object in a session hash.

You can use flash (ie. flash[:my_variable] = my_data) to pass information from one action to the next. Be careful how you use it. I have ran into some problems passing variables back to the same action using different request methods.