Question

I have a workflow app written in Rails and there are a number of prompts which the user will go through. When these prompts/manual actions are “proceeded” a time stamp is stored against the a workflow model.

Code looks something like so

class Workflow < ActiveRecord::Base

end

class OpenBook < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :workflow, :polymorphic => true
end

class ReadFirstPage < 
  belongs_to :workflow, :polymorphic => true
end

At the moment each workflow item ( OpenBook ) and spits out a bit of text (set in the model) and a forward / backward button on the view. The controllers for these workitems also do the similar things (new, done, edit, proceed, rewind).

Ideally I would like to just use the same controller and views and just change the model. Is theer something I can do with the routes eg?

resources :open_books, :controller => "workflow_item"

Im not sure how I would go about getting the correct assignments in the controller.

Or am I just doing this completely wrong and I should be using helpers?

Answer 1

You might have an easier time using a series of controllers for each specific object type that inherit from a common parent. That way most of the duplication can be in the base class where only the differences are expressed in the children.

To ensure your templates are rendered correctly, you may have to specify the full path to them or it will look for customized versions:

 def index
   # ...
   render(:template => 'parent/index')
 end

Usually this is redundant, but in your case you may need it or it will default to showing the non-existent child-template first.