This is a fairly long question, but it's a common one that applies to a lot of applications. Here goes!
Many apps have/want a setup similar to this:
1) ModelA has many ModelBs (Eg: User has many Photos). 2) Admins CRUD all photos at /photos and beyond (Eg: /photos/1/edit). 3) Admins CRUD User photos at /user/1/photos and beyond. 4) Users CRUD their photos at /account/photos and beyond.
Some people don't bother with #2, because photos can be CRUDed via #3. However, I want #2 because it gives you a higher/broader view of the Photos resource.
I'm trying to figure out an efficient, DRY/semi-DRY way of implementing this. At the moment:
For #2 above, I've: 1) Restricted PhotosController to admins. 2) Created a Photos resource (map.resources :photos).
For #3 above, I've: 1) Nested a Photos resource within the Users resource: map.resources :users, :has_many => :photos
For #4 above, I've: 1) Created Account::PhotosController, which restricts photos to the current user (account). 2) Nested Account::PhotosController within the Account singleton resource: map.resource :account do |account| account.resources :photos, :controller => 'account/photos' end
Everything but #3 works perfectly. /user/1/photos calls PhotosController#index , which finds all photos, rather than finding only photos belonging to user 1.
I've come up with a few solutions, but don't feel that any of them are ideal.
Solution #1: Create a whole new controller, which finds photos within the specified user. However, this would duplicate 95% of PropertiesController, which is pretty dirty.
Solution #2: Create a method in PhotosController that abstracts the finding of photos. However, this feels wrong because it's mixing functionality between two different resources (photos vs user-photos). See http://pastie.org/pastes/322733
Solution #3: Create a new controller which inherits from PhotosController, and add a bit of logic to PhotosController to prevent it from finding photos when they've already been found. See http://pastie.org/322734
Solution #4: Use the resource_controller plugin. However, I find that r_c limits what I can do in some controller actions. For example, r_c only provides customisable failure scenarios for #create, #update and #destroy, while I need to customise every action's failure scenario.
So, what do you guys think of those solutions, and are there any other solutions that are more ideal?
Cheers, Nick
