Context sensitive edit/new action

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have the following associations:

Entity   has_one :client_role

ClientRole   belongs_to :entity

There should be two ways to add a client role, one where the entity exists and one where the entity does not.

In the case where the entity does not exist I have wired the client controller to initialize an entity and an entity.client, populate both from client/new, and add both via client/create. This works.

Here is my problem.

The client/edit method can logically be reached either from clients/index (client role exists) or from entities/index (client role may or may not exist). However, the :id passed via params in each case refers to a different model, client and entity respectively. Ideally, when calling from entities/index where no client role exists I should call new_client_path. However, new in this sense implies an existing entity, something that I cannot pass via new_client_path and which would not be understood by clients_controller.new as written in any case.

Basically, what I must do is detect what model the :id passed belongs too in edit and set up the necessary objects dependent upon that determination. Or, I have to call a method so that this determination is already satisfied. I cannot simply find against both models inside the controller and see which one fails since it is possible that the edit call is for an existing client role. Further, when a new client role is required the entity id: passed might refer to an entirely different client role which then would be returned in error.

Is this a case where I need a separate controller and special entry in the routes file to handle this need?

  map.resources :clients

  map.resources :entities do |entity|     entity.resources :client, :controller => ?, :method => edit/new?   end

Thanks in advance for any assistance offered.

2

James Byrne wrote:

I have the following associations:

Entity   has_one :client_role

ClientRole   belongs_to :entity

I have this in my config/routes

  map.resources :clients do |client|     # A client role has only one entity.     client.resource :entity   end

  map.resources :entities do |entity|     # An entity can only have one client role     entity.resource :client     entity.resources :locations     # And only one vendor role     entity.resource :vendor   end

And rake routes gives me this:

...              new_entity_client GET /entities/:entity_id/client/new {:action=>"new", :controller=>"clients"}    formatted_new_entity_client GET /entities/:entity_id/client/new.:format {:action=>"new", :controller=>"clients"}             edit_entity_client GET /entities/:entity_id/client/edit {:action=>"edit", :controller=>"clients"}   formatted_edit_entity_client GET /entities/:entity_id/client/edit.:format {:action=>"edit", :controller=>"clients"}                  entity_client GET /entities/:entity_id/client {:action=>"show", :controller=>"clients"}        formatted_entity_client GET /entities/:entity_id/client.:format {:action=>"show", :controller=>"clients"}                                PUT /entities/:entity_id/client {:action=>"update", :controller=>"clients"}                                PUT /entities/:entity_id/client.:format {:action=>"update", :controller=>"clients"}                                DELETE /entities/:entity_id/client {:action=>"destroy", :controller=>"clients"}                                DELETE /entities/:entity_id/client.:format {:action=>"destroy", :controller=>"clients"}

But if I write this in views/entities/index ... 33 <%- if entity.client.nil? -%> 34 <%= link_to 'Add Client Role', new_entity_client(entity) -%> 36

Then I see this:

NoMethodError in Entities#index

Showing entities/index.html.erb where line #34 raised:

undefined method `new_entity_client' for #<ActionView::Base:0xb793f9d8>

app/views/entities/index.html.erb:34:in `_run_erb_47app47views47entities47index46html46erb' app/views/entities/index.html.erb:11:in `each' app/views/entities/index.html.erb:11:in `_run_erb_47app47views47entities47index46html46erb' app/controllers/entities_controller.rb:13:in `index'

and params contains nil.

I am somewhat confused at this point. Rakes routes shows that new_entity_client is defined and Rails says that it is not. Can anyone point me in the right direction?