Question

From my client, I am sending an object that is related to other objects:

var data = {
  "comment": result.comment,
  "doc": {
    "id": result.doc.id
  }
  "site": {
    "url": result.site.url
  }
};

$.ajax({
  url: '/data',
  type: 'POST',
  data: data
});

This gets posted to my /data controller. In the create method, I have this block of code:

def create
  @data = Data.new(params[:data])
  @data.user_id = current_user.id

  respond_to do |format|
    if @data.save
      @doc = Doc.find_or_create_by_id(params[:doc])
      @doc.save
      @site = Site.new(params[:site])
      @site.doc_id = @doc.id
      @site.save

      format.html //stuff
      format.json //stuff
      format.js //stuff
  end
end

I’m curious if I am approaching this problem correctly. For related objects like the one I have, the controller seems to be pretty ‘heavy’.

Are there any other solutions to this problem out there?

EDIT:

Data model:

class Data
  belongs_to :site, :polymorphic => true
  belongs_to :user
end

Answer 1

How does your data model looks like? Do you have assignment methods for all nested attributes?

def create
  @data = Data.new(params[:data])
  @data.user = current_user

  respond_to do |format|
    if @data.save
      @doc = Doc.find_or_create_by_id(params[:doc][:id]) 
      @site = @doc.sites.create(params[:site])

      format.html //stuff
      format.json //stuff
      format.js //stuff
  end
end

You can see more details about Active Record Relations in the Rails Guides.