Question

I have a form to create a new record.

I have that partial that I’d like to use from the view in different models.

How do i do that? It seems like the controller for the partial form should be reusable as well.

For example, this is what I have. I call this partial both from my view/users/show and view/message/new, and so it seems like I need to create an @message and @contact instance in both the user controller and message controller. Feels not DRY:

= semantic_form_for @message do |f|
  2   #message_form
  3     = f.error_messages
  4     %p
  5       = f.label :account
  6       %br
  7       = f.text_field :account
  8     %p
  9       = f.label :subject
 10       %br
 11       = f.text_field :subject
 12     %p
 13       = f.label :body
 14       %br
 15       = f.text_area :body
 16     = hidden_field_tag :sender_id, params[:sender_id]
 17     = hidden_field_tag :receiver_id, params[:receiver_id]
 18 
 19     = f.submit
 20   #add_contact_btn
 21     = link_to "Add Contact", new_contact_path
 22 
 23     #contact_form
 24       = form_for @contact do |fc|
 25         %p
 26           = fc.label :first_name
 27           %br
 28           = fc.text_field :first_name
 29         %p
 30           = fc.label :last_name
 31           %br
 32           = fc.text_field :last_name

Answer 1

Keep the partial in a shared folder and refer to it whenever you need to.

For example, if you wanted to use the shared/_form.html.{erb,haml} partial, you would write:

render 'shared/form'

Controllers are not tied to models. You can manage as many as you need in a single controller. They are tied to the views, however, so make sure they are fit for your models.

---

If you are just creating a new message/contact every time, you could just create them in the form itself:

= semantic_form_for Message.new do |f|

# ...

= form_for Contact.new do |fc|

This way you don’t have to keep an instance variable in your unrelated controllers around.