Question

My app consists of two rails servers with mostly different concerns sitting behind a reverse proxy. Let’s call them Server1 and Server2. Occasionally, Server1 needs to render a link to a url on Server2. Is there a good way to use Rails route helpers for this? Specifically in Rails 2? I came up with this:

ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|

  # other routes omitted

  map.with_options(:host => 'server2.example.com') do |add|
    # create a named route for 'http://server2.example.com/thingies'
    add.server2_thingies         '/thingies',             :controller => 'fake'

    # create a named route for 'http://server2.example.com/thingies/combobulate'
    add.enhance_server2_thingies '/thingies/combobulate', :controller => 'fake'

    # create a named route for 'http://server2.example.com/mabobs/combobulate'
    add.enhance_server2_mabobs   '/mabobs/combobulate',   :controller => 'fake'

    # etc..
  end

end

So then I can use server2_thingies_url and such in my views. This works, but it makes me feel like a bad person because there is no FakeController and I certainly have no intention of routing requests to it. I considered making helper methods and placing them in app/controllers/application_controller.rb, but a colleague made the argument that it is best to keep all route helpers in routes.rb, so things like rake routes will be accurate, for instance. Is there a better way?

Answer 1

I think I’d make a counter-argument to your colleague: if you’re having to dirty up routes.rb with a “FakeController”, then your rake routes is still not going to be accurate. In fact, I’d say that this is exactly the kind of thing that a helper was meant to help: it’s taking logic that belongs purely in the view (link generation), and removing it from your view templates. Helpers are also easier to maintain and tweak.

Another advantage to the helper style is that if and when it’s time to upgrade to Rails 3.x, the less hackish your routes.rb file is, the happier you will be – and that I can attest to from experience. 🙂