Nested REST resource routes without controller name

rubyonrails-talk
1

I am curious if the following URL pattern is appropriate to use with REST and map.resources:

Let's say I want to build a website with information about cars. I decide that there will be a page to view/manage cars by model. The route for this is easily created:

  map.resources :cars

The URLs look great. But now I want to introduce the ability to specify cars by year. I can do this by modifying the existing route:

  map.resources :cars do |car|     car.resources :years   end

However, this leads to an undesirable URL pattern. To view a 1998 Corvette, I need to point my browser at /cars/corvette/years/1998. What I wanted was /car/corvette/1998. In addition, the /car/corvette URL would enumerate all years that the corvette was produced. I want a POST request on /car/corvette to be used for adding new years.

Essentially, I want the ability to nest resources, without specifying the nested resource name. I know how to do this without using the resources API, so I'm not looking for a workaround.

In the CarsController, I would access a car with params[:id]. In the CarYearsController, I would access a particular year of a car by using params[:car] and params[:id]. (The :id would be the year). Is this just a bad idea?

2

It looks like someone else has already asked this question, but there was no feedback: http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/browse_thread/thread/c21c7f2667f55841/11c41b6455eb44a2?lnk=gst&q=nesting+resources&rnum=7#11c41b6455eb44a2