counting a users adverts and then doing stuff

As yo explain this problem, you could just check the number of adverts the user has in the add function. Something like this pseudo code

def add

adverts = User.adverts

if adverts.length > 3

flash too many adverts

redirect back

else

all is normal and the user can add adverts

end

I can’t see a need to do this in before filters.

Trausti

Yes, the action in your adverts controller to create new adverts.

I usually call these add, not very restful I know.

Trausti

When a user wants to add an advert, what action does he call first ?

Trausti

New it is then!

and thanks, that's working a treat. Imagine this is more simple than my previously over-engineered idea.

And then when the user POSTs directly to your create action, your maximum advert limit is for naught. It might *seem* to make more sense to put this in the create action, where the advertisement is actually getting persisted to the DB or whathaveyou, but even then this seems like domain specific logic that really should go in your model. (I know I'm getting waaaay ahead of myself here, but what if this one specific controller ends up not being the only place you'll have users be able to create adverts from? More importantly I guess, keeping this in the model makes everything *much* easier to spec). A simple "maxed_adverts?" method and an "create_avert" method in the model which checks the prior would do nicely.

The User model does sound reasonable.

maxed_adverts? looks like something that checks if the user has maxed their advert limit. Maybe it looks like "def maxed_averts?; averts.count >= 3; end"? Maybe it looks different.

Call it like you would any other method on your models... I guess it helps when your starting out to always remember that Rails "models" are nothing more than instances of Ruby classes which *usually* descend from ActiveRecord::Base. Nothing magical about them but the magic you give them.