Question

I’m looking to load a single (chosen randomly) object from a single table in my database on every page of my rails app.

For example, a quotes table which has several quotes in the table, and I just want one on every page load.

What’s the best way to accomplish this? Obviously copy & pasting the query into each controller isn’t the right way to go about this.

Answer 1

I wouldn’t use before_filter for this, there is no need to access database on redirecting actions and other “not rendered” actions. Instead I would use helper_function, and I would call it in the layout, as you need to position it anyways.

def random_quote
  @quote ||= "Select random quote here"
end

helper_method :random_quote

Your method of selecting a quote is up to you. You just need to access random_quote as a normal helper method in the layout. This only access one quote per action, only if the layout is rendered.