File: README — Documentation for resourceful

ResourcefulParenting

A rails plugin that makes working with nested resources easier.

It provides the following methods to your RESTful controllers:

* parent : Returns the most immediate parent resource
  * parent(-1)       : Same as parent
  * parent(-2)       : Returns the parent resource's parent
  * parent(N)        : Returns the Nth parent resource
  * parent(0)        : Returns the top level parent
* parents            : Returns an array of all the parent resources
* polymorphic_p_url  : Same as calling polymorphic_url but adding parents to the list
* polymorphic_p_path : Same as calling polymorphic_path but adding parents to the list

polymotphic_p_url and polymorphic_p_path are automatically exposed as helper methods for usage in the views. Feel free to expose the others via helper_method in your ApplicationController

Installation

Add to your Gemfile:

gem 'resourceful_parenting'

Example

Assuming the classical problem of a comments resource nested under several different parent resources:

class CommentsController < ApplicationController

  def create
    # regular create work, then:

    redirect_to parent # Back to the parent's show page
    # OR
    redirect_to polymorphic_p_url(@comment) # Back to /parents/ID/comments/ID
    # OR
    redirect_to polymorphic_p_url(:comments) # Back to /parents/ID/comments

  end

end

Todo

A respectable test suite. This plugin was just a bunch of ApplicationController methods I decided to extract.

Notes

There is similar functionality in other plugins, however they often do lots more which I didn’t need.

This plugin was inspired after watching Ryan Bates hand-roll a custom method for doing this for the Nth time.