Question

In my application, I have an user model/controller. An user can have multiple videos, images and blog items. User, and the items can have comments. So I’ve got the following controllers

• user
• user/comments
• user/picture
• user/picture/comments
• user/video
• user/video/comments
• user/blog
• user/blog/comments

The problem is, all the comments controllers are almost identical, and the code is becoming hard to manage. Now I’d like to specify a central place, e.g. a app-level CommentsController, which would have the methods to be called from sub-controllers.

What is the best way to do that?

How would for example the following code look after such a change:

class User::Picture::CommentsController < ApplicationController
  def delete_all
    @user = User.find(params[:user_id])
    @picture = @user.pictures.find(params[:picture_id])

    if @picture.has_access(current_user)
      @picture.comments.destroy_all

      redirect_to :back, :notice=>t(:actionsuccesful)
    else
      redirect_to :back, :alert=>t(:accessdenied)
    end
  end
end

The @user && @picture initializations are same among different methods (destroy, delete_all, create, index). Could they be moved into a before_filter which would be a sub-controller specific? And then, delete_all would be implemented in the CommentsController?

Answer 1

If the code is that generic, two options:

1) a module including shared methods

Example:

module CommentsActions
  # actions, methods
end

class User::Picture::CommentsController <ApplicationController
  include CommentsActions
  #your additional actions
end

2) subclassing comment controllers from one controller

Example:

class CommentsController < ApplicationController
  # actions, methods, filters etc...
end

class User::Picture::CommentsController < CommentsController
  #your additional actions
end