RESTful question

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have a restful app which is laid out in true restful fashion. But I need a way to dump all the info since the purpose of this app is to generate a config file. Do I create a new model and have the index of that do the dump? I don't want to just iterate through the individual records with Show bc I do need to run som logic over the sum of data.

So do I just scaffold something called dump and have index of /dump output the config file?

2

Sounds to me like you want a new controller with a create action to generate the config file. That would be restful approach.

Jeff

purpleworkshops.com softiesonrails.com

3

Oooh… I’m gonna throw my own spin on this and say tha it should not be a create… but instead a retrieve. While it’s true you might be “creating” a new dump, you actually want to “GET” the configuration from the system. Just like when you request a resource that might be XML,. you don’t “create a new dump of the objects in xml” , you request them as xml, and you call @foos.to_xml, where Rails creates the XML on the fly and renders it.

So…

routes.rb

map.resource :configuration

configurations_controller.rb…

class ConfigurationsController < ApplicationController

def show @some_model = SomeModel.build_configuration

 # some rendering to the view, or send_file, or send_data or whatever

end

end

That, to me, seems the appropriate method. UNLESS you really are letting people create a configuration that you want to persist somewhere for later retrieval, then the create action might be appropriate. But it sounds to me like you really are doing a RETRIEVAL, so that sounds like GET /configuration

4

That's another good way to look at it.

Jeff