Question

Can I use an if statement in my controller or is this bad practice?

In both my create and destroy actions for TracksController, I want to do something like this:

if Product
@product = Product.find(params[:product_id])
@track = @product.tracks.create(params[:track])

eslif Release
@Release = Release.find(params[:release_id])
@track = @release.tracks.create(params[:track])
end

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

I’d go further and suggest a more DRY approach to the before_filter:

class TracksController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :get_track_parent, only: [ :create, :destroy ]

  def create
    @track = @parent.tracks.create(params[:track])
    ...
    redirect_to @parent
  end

  private

  def get_track_parent
    if params[:product_id].present?
      @parent = Product.find(params[:product_id])
    elsif params[:release_id].present?
      @parent = Release.find(params[:release_id])
    end
  end
end

I used parent because we were given a context for the model relationships but I assume there’s a better term to describe the commonality between release and product wrt tracks.