Comments on: RESTful admin controllers and views with Rails

By: Max

Max — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 18:43:15 +0000

Just to put my 2 cents in. Most of the time administrative views are completely different to what normal users see. Take WordPress for example, there’s little to no “repeating yourself”! But, if you don’t have a CMS then use partials.

By: RESSOURCES FOR THOSE WHO HELP

RESSOURCES FOR THOSE WHO HELP — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:51:12 +0000

PTSD Reference List (Alpha)…

I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…

By: Frank

Frank — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:54:30 +0000

@Dan, glad that you found the post useful!

Instead of DRY, it should be TNRYBDBAAI : Try Not Repeating Yourself But Don’t Be Anal About It.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:48:05 +0000

It’s unbelievable how this post helped me in the last project I’m working on. I avoid complex structures of ifs everywhere… even if sometimes, I have to repeat myself, it’s much clearer.

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:01:08 +0000

@Brandon Hauff

Very good point. But IMO it is a scenario where it’s ok to slack off with the DRY principle. It’s better to repeat a few things here and there with your views than to pollute your app with some ugly conditional statements.

Thanks for your comment!

By: Brandon Hauff

Brandon Hauff — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:32:51 +0000

I have been using this technique for a while now on a very large app. I not only have admins and normal users, but some in between types. The namespacing works great to separate out these concerns. My only complaint with the technique is that views tend to not be dry, so sometimes a single UI change might require editing multiple views across all of the namespaces.

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:38:41 +0000

@mike wyatt

Yes, this is without a doubt a more elegant way to fetch the resources. But what about before and after filters that must not be called when you’re on the admin side or the other way around? It means more conditionals expressions and more obstrusive code to write. And then there are the update and create actions that will differ and generate some “if” statements… and then there are the views, the partials… Exceptions start to popup everywhere and the nightmare begins!

Thanks for your code snippet though. I like how you made it generic and named the method “resources”. It keeps you thinking in REST mode.

By: mike wyatt

mike wyatt — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:24:19 +0000

while I do mostly agree with you, your exampled reasoning could be resolved with something like this

http://gist.github.com/357973

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:42:30 +0000

@Jan,

Yeah this thing with the form_for helper is not obvious at all IMO. I’m glad it was helpful to you!

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:23:52 +0000

I was just trying to figure out the form_for part yesterday. Thank you!