Home/ Questions/Q 8447397
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-10T10:10:22+00:00

I manage a few Rails sites that have very similar source code with a

  • 0

I manage a few Rails sites that have very similar source code with a few small differences (most but not all differences reside in the database). I would like each site to have identical base source code with any source code differences residing in custom files that override the base source code. For example, if one site had a photo contest going, that site would have a special view file that the other sites would not have, yet all would have the same default view file (only the one with the contest would be overridden). Would this be a task for Rails Engines? If not (or if there is a better way), how would you go about doing this?

Thanks.

Edit: Here’s another example – one site (out of the three I manage) needs to have special text on a certain page. I want the view for this page on all three sites to remain the same and I do NOT want to have conditional code in the view determining whether or not to show this text. Rather, I’d prefer to have a separate view for the variant site that overrides the default view (MUCH easier to manage differences between sites this way).

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The immediate answer to your question (see below). The longer explaination to your question, http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/engines.html#overriding-views. Let me know if you still have questions (engines are a hobby of mine).

    app1
|- app/views/photo_contests
|                      |- index.html.erb  # => custom view template #1
|
\- Gemfile (gem 'common_engine')

app2
|- app/views/photo_contests
|                      |- index.html.erb  # => custom view template #2
|
\- Gemfile (gem 'common_engine')


common_engine
|
|- app/controllers/PhotoContentsControllers.rb
|                      |- index
|                      |- show
|                      |- vote
|
|- app/models/photo_contest.rb
|
|- app/views/photo_contents
|                      |-  index.html.erb
|                      |-  show.html.erb
|                      |-  vote.html.erb
|- config/routes.rb
|- lib/common_engine/engine.rb
|- lib/common_engine.rb
\- common_engine.gemspec
    • 0