Question

I currently have code in my ApplicationController to check if a user is logged in and has the required access to perform a given action (the tests take place in a before_filter).

I require the same functionality in the views to decide if I should be showing the admin links in a list view, but how do I best avoid duplicating code in the controllers and views?

The way I have chosen to do it now, is to have the user_can_edit_customers? essentially be a wrapper for ‘can_edit_customers?’ on my User class:

ApplicationController:

 class ApplicationController 

And then do something similar in my view helpers.

This way all functionality is encapsulated in the User model but I still need to define wrappers in my controllers and helpers, but are there smarter ways of doing this?

Note, the user stuff is only an example – this also applies to other pieces of functionality.

Answer 1

I would say do away with the wrappers and just call can_edit_customers? directly on the user object passed to the view.

If you want to keep them a solution might be to use helper_method in your controller.

helper_method :current_user, :can_edit_customers?  def current_user     @current_user ||= User.find_by_id(session[:user]) end  def can_edit_customers?     @current_user.can_edit_customers? end 

This way the method also becomes available in the view.

<% if can_edit_customers? -%>...<% end -%>