Question

I am using Rails 3.2.1.

Is it possible to use different views when using nested resources? i.e. profile/comments post/comments. Let’s say you want both pages to look completely different. Is there a way to do this without overriding render in every controller action?

Preferably I still want to use respond_with.

Answer 1

I didn’t find anything, and in the end I did it the following way:

class NestedController < ApplicationController

  before_filter :retrieve_parent
  before_filter :retrieve_scope

  layout :retrieve_layout

  def retrieve_scope
    @scope = @parent.nil? ? controller_name : @parent.class.name.pluralize.downcase || ''
  end

  def retrieve_view
    controller_name + '/' + @scope + '/' + action_name
  end

  def retrieve_parent
    params.each do |name, value|
      if name =~ /(.+)_id$/
        @parent = $1.classify.constantize.find(value)
      end
    end
  end

  def retrieve_layout
   template_exists?(@scope, 'layouts') ? @scope : 'application'
  end

end

Every controller that uses nested resources, will extend from NestedController.

Note that the retrieve_parent function has been derived from Ryan’s railscast about polymorphic associations.

Hope this helps someone.