Question

I need to generate links in my views using the url helpers such as user_path(@user), the catch is, in some cases I don’t know what model I am creating this link for i.e. whether it is a user or a store or someting else

I would like to be able to determine this on the fly and call the appropriate view helper, currently I am doing the following, but I am wondering if there is a drier way of doing it.

if object.class == "Store"
   store_path(object)
elsif object.class == "User"
   user_path(object)
...etc

Answer 1

url_for(object) does what you need:

If you instead of a hash pass a record
(like an Active Record or Active
Resource) as the options parameter,
you‘ll trigger the named route for
that record. The lookup will happen on
the name of the class. So passing a
Workshop object will attempt to use
the workshop_path route.

If you are using link_to, then you can just pass the object as the URL:

<%= link_to 'Title', object %>