Question

My rails project is paginating the HTML format but not the the others. Can someone suggest a more elegant approach to dealing with the difference in getting the @contacts collection? Perhaps the pagination version should be a different method that only supports HTML?

def index
  if request.format.to_sym == :html
    @contacts = Contact.paginate(page: params[:page]).search(params[:search])
  else
    @contacts = Contact.search(params[:search])
  end      

  respond_to do |format|
    format.html { render html: @contacts }
    format.mobile { render mobile: @contacts }
    format.json { render json: @contacts }
    format.xml { render xml: @contacts.to_xml }
  end
end

My solution was to add paginate as a RESTful resource in routes.rb which automagically gives me the route helper method: paginate_contacts_path

resources :contacts do
  collection do
    get 'paginate'
  end
end

and to have a separate paginate method in ContactsController

def index
  @contacts = Contact.search(params[:search])

  respond_to do |format|
    format.html { render html: @contacts }
    format.mobile { render mobile: @contacts }
    format.json { render json: @contacts }
    format.xml { render xml: @contacts.to_xml }
  end
end

def paginate
  @contacts = Contact.paginate(page: params[:page]).search(params[:search])

  respond_to do |format|
    format.html
  end
end

Answer 1

Strongly prefer a separate method because this creates inconstancies and makes the piece less testable. Also you would, in for example documentation, need to create exceptions.

Another way is to handle this with some parameter. Now it suddenly (when you only change views) returns different data. That might look like an error for an unknown developer and might raise issues.

So don’t do it magically, clear parameter or separate method.