Question

I’m just getting into Rails and I’m having some trouble understanding some syntax elements that the guides I’m reading just seem to take for granted.

This afternoon I was working on a small sample project and was trying to refactor some code. Basically, I want to include links to admin only controls in my nav bar that are dependent on which page is currently being viewed. This was my original code:

class RoomsController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :admin_controlls

  def new
  end

  def create
  end

  def edit
  end

  def update
  end

  def index
  end

  def destroy
  end

  private
    def admin_controlls
      @adminControlls = "rooms"
    end
end

My thinking was that this code would essentially be the same in every controller where I want to create admin controls. The only difference being the value of the flag variable @adminControlls I want to pass to the View.

So, I attempted this:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  protect_from_forgery
  include SessionsHelper

  def admin_controlls(page)
      @adminControlls = page
  end
end

And changed the Rooms controller to this:

class RoomsController < ApplicationController
  before_filter admin_controlls "rooms"

  def new
  end

  def create
  end

  def edit
  end

  def update
  end

  def index
  end

  def destroy
  end

end  

I think my confusion starts with the before_filter and why calling a method there requires a symbol. I can’t figure out how to pass a string into the method when it is called as a symbol, and all my efforts to change the before filter to call a method (as above) have failed. Overall I’m just not feeling like I’m grasping some subtleties of the syntax. If anyone has a resource that would be helpful, I’d appreciate it.

Answer 1

Could you try this: before_filter { |c| c.admin_controlls "rooms" } ? A similar question could be found here: How can I send a parameter to a before filter?