Question

I have developed a normal browser-based Rails game application. I’m now adding CloudMailin to the mix, effectively exposing an alternative interface via email.

Consider, as a representative example, my existing create action:

class GamesController < ApplicationController

  def create
    @game = Game.params[:new]

    if @game.random_create
      # Asked to create a game using random choices.
      # Make the random choices, then present it to the user for tweaking
      @game.expand_random_choices

      render :action => new
    else
      # Fully specified. Create the game
      begin
        @game.save!

        # ...other work including DB operations ...

        flash[:notice] += 'Game was successfully created.'
        redirect_to :action => :play, :id => @game
      rescue ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid
        @game.valid?
        render :action => 'new'
      end
    end
  end
end

I now have my PbemController for handling Cloudmailin emails:

class PbemController < ApplicationController

  # Handle inbound email
  def handle
    if email_is_a_game_creation
    ...
    end

    render :text => "Handled"
  end
end

What the best and DRYest way to invoke the existing create behaviour from the PbemController? Is my only real option extracting each “shared” action to a module in /lib' andinclude`ing that in each controller?

Answer 1

Normally the best option is to move as much as you can into the model. That way any code that can be executed from the controller can also be executed from the handler.

You may be able to make a method like create_or_build_random that could potentially help here?