Question

I’m working on a project that has two different Rails apps. One is the web app, and another is the API app. They both use the same database. How, or what, is the proper way for them to use the same models and schema? Currently, it appears as though the model files are copied from one app to the other, and they seem woefully out of synch when checking the differences.

Answer 1

A few options come to mind:

• Git submodules. Store your models in a separate repo (or repos), and then include it as a Git submodule in each app. This allows you to reuse them without having redundancy, though you’ll likely have to ensure that you keep which revision each app is using in-sync.

• Make it one app, with two distinct parts. Maybe your API could be a simple Sinatra (or other microframework) app, and reside within the Rails app, and then mounted to a path/subdomain. This may be the least amount of work and the simplest, but it’s also probably the most cluttered.

• Use your own API. You already have an API, why not use it? Your front-end app can just talk to that and doesn’t have to have any the model logic inside it. This also has the nice side-effect of ensuring that your API works and is full-featured, as you’re now a consumer of it instead of just third-parties.

Which one you pick is up to you, though I happen to prefer the last. While it’s probably more work, you’ll likely end up with an overall better design by making your business logic external (and making MVC violations harder, if not impossible).