Question

Currently I am using the Last.fm api to return concert data (returns a hash) in my controller, and in the view cycling through this hash to return the data I want. I want this concert data to become more dynamic and put everything into a model. How do I do this? Should I do this in the controller or somehow in the model?

Here is an example of my code

# app/controllers/events_controller.rb
class EventsController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @events = @lastfm.geo.get_events("Chicago",0,5)
    respond_with @events
  end
end

# app/views/events/index.html.erb
<% @events.each do |event| %>
  Headliner: <%= event["artists"]["headliner"] %>
<% end %>

In this example I would would want and Event Model with headliner as a parameter, and put all 5 of the events into this model.

Answer 1

I believe it’s a good idea to have a model. There are several advantages as I can see

1 – You could access data as OO way as other objects

2 – if you have some business logics (Ex: calculations) you could do it in the model itself with out messing up your view

3 – it’s clean and DRY

Example model class would be (this is not a working model, but just to give you an idea):

class Event
  attr_accessor :headliner


  def self.event_list(limit = 5)
    lastfm.geo.get_events("Chicago",0,limit) 
  end

end

So you can clean-up your view as

<% Event.each do |event| %>
   Headliner: event.headliner
<% end %>