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I have a wizard that is responsible for creating 3 different types of resources. When the user completes the wizard, the user hits submit and an ajax POST is sent to create the 3 new entries. These 3 resources all belong_to User. I was wondering if I should POST 1 ajax request to the User controller containing details of all 3 resources, or if I should POST 3 separate ajax requests to each resource’s controller. What’s the proper way to do this? Thanks!
Firstly, a minor correction: you cannot post a request to a resource model. I believe what you are talking about is posting to the models’ respective controllers (which I presume to exist).
If you have a single form for the wizard, then as you understand it, it will post one single time. Why not work with that? But before we go with that, let’s address the alternative.
What you are suggesting, starting 3 ajax requests, brings in more problems than it solves. For example, what if there is an error in one of the requests? How do you cancel the other two, if you want to follow the principle of atomicity. There may be other reasons why such a design consideration is going to be a bad one, but I think this is trouble enough. Let’s move on to how we can handle this.
The controller that is responsible for the wizard’s form should provide a bit more logic to handle the 3 additional resources. If the types of resources are similar, you could be using single-table-inheritance or something to simplify some of the controller code, but that’s not so relevant. We will assume that the resources are not similar at all.
Simply put, you could build the form as a multi-model form. If users can create multiple entries of each type of resource then you will have a form that creates multiple child models.
If you only need one of each resource, then the answer is really simple, just use the accepts_nested_attributes_for method for each type of resource in your User model and the fields_for method in your views.
If you need multiple of each resource, then perhaps you may wish to find out more about multiple children models in a form.