Question

My project name is clog, so I named my models and controllers like this: Clog::User Clog::Userscontroller.

Is this naming convention mandatory?

Answer 1

Yes, following the naming convention helps a great deal because not only does rails use it to generate other names, but other gems as well.

Specific to your question, you may be asking if you need to name the controller as UserController given that your model is called User. That is not necessary at all, and you may call it anything else if it better fits your purpose.

In this case, you will probably want to create a few controllers like so:

My::AccountController # for e.g.. /my/account
Admin::UsersController # for e.g. /admin/users/1

For a user, you refer to your own user record, as ‘your account’ so this makes more sense. However, the administrator’s perspective would be to manage user records. You may also name a controller one thing and serve it under a different route. In your routes file, you may do this:

namespace :admin do
    resources :users, :path => "user-accounts"
end

To reiterate, your model name need not match up to the controller name. They are only named similarly by association: UserController is understood to handle User records.