Rails 3 - Loading a Subnav with Ajax… Which controller owns a subnav?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Once my Rails 3 app is loaded, a user can click an item which needs to then load a dynamic subnav.

My thinking is (since it needs to be dynamic) is onClick to make a jQuery AJAX call to the server and then to inject the HTML response into a DIV on the page...

What I'd like your advice on is how/where the subnav logic should live in the rails app, as I don't have a navigation controller or view... But maybe I should have one?

Do I create a navigation controller? Or use the application controller? I also have a pages controller that I use for the landing page, about, contact, etc...

2

I don't think there is a 'correct' answer to this, it depends entirely on your specific application. Generally if you put something in what seems intuitively to you to be the right place you will not go far wrong. Also make sure you write good automated tests so you can easily re-factor when you realise you did not get it right the first time, so you can move stuff about secure in the knowledge that you have probably not broken anything.

Colin

3

check the simple navigations plugin

http://blog.andischacke.com/2009/10/simple-navigation-gemplugin-version-2.html