Shared templates across controllers

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hey all,

Here's my situation: I have a pair of controllers with associated models (called Services and Testimonials) that are quite similar. Because their CRUD behavior is executed via AJAX, the "templates" for the actions are all short .rjs files. Now, because of the similarity of the models, most of the templates are exactly the same, with only the object names changed. That is, where one looks like this:

page.visual_effect :toggle_slide, 'hidden_testimonial_form' page.visual_effect :toggle_slide, 'add_testimonial_button'

The other looks like this:

page.visual_effect :toggle_slide, 'hidden_service_form' page.visual_effect :toggle_slide, 'add_service_button'

Obviously there's no reason these should be separate. My question is, what's the best way to set these up as shared templates? Both of the controllers inherit from a third controller (Brochure) because of shared authentication behavior. But the only way I can think of to share templates is something like this:

Put template files in /views/brochure.

At the end of each action, explicitly render the template. i.e.

def new   ...   render :template => 'brochure/new end

Is there a better way that I'm missing?

2

I can think of a few things off the top of my head - one way is to have one RJS file that looks like this:

page.visual_effect :toggle_slide, "hidden_#{@object}_form" page.visual_effect :toggle_slide, "add_#{@object}_testimonial}_button"

And in each controller action, right before rendering the RJS, do this

@object = "testimonial"

or

@object = "service"

Basically, use instance variables (or another mechanism) to make things available to the RJS template just like you would with anything else.

Heck if you have @service or @testimonial there, you could generalize it more by using the same variable for each - @thing

then do @thing.class.downcase to get "testimonial" or "service"

How does that sound? :slight_smile:

3

Actually, I got that part pretty well solved by just changing everything to "widget." :slight_smile:

The part I'm wondering is if there's some way to re-route most of a controller to a different set of views than the standard default. Right now every action ends with "render :template => 'widget/ action_name'" but I'm curious if there's a better way.

-Adam

4

Sure. No, there really isn't. It's a convenience thing. Not having to specify the template is a blessing in most cases. Thing is, you could probably do simething interesting with before / after filters.

5

Check out the docs for ActionController::Base#view_paths. You can probably monkey with that to get both controllers to look in the same directory.