ControllerSupport

Controller Supports are controller oriented mixins (modules) for Rails that can help you extract behaviour from controllers into shared resources.

Why?

Controller Supports lets you extract common behaviour or non-core controller knowledge into it's seperate resource which makes it easier to test and maintain. Some example of ControllerSupports:

• UserSupport - Authentication and current_user
• ErrorSupport - Global error methods and a before filter to catch uncaught exceptions
• EventSupport - Used to load the event resource based on the params[:id]
• LocalizationSupport - Helper methods to build hashes that will be passed to I18n
• MobileSupport - Check if in a mobile session and change the layout

ControllerSupports are just an extension of ActiveSupport::Concern so they supply all of the behaviours that you'd get from ActiveSupport::Concern.
What Controller Supports adds on top of ActiveSupport::Concern is an easier way to define methods as helper_methods and before_filters. It does so in such a way that will enable you to include the support in controllers but also into other objects like test stubs or Mailers.

If you don't know ActiveSupport::Concern there are several links to reading material in the bottom of this README.

Installation

Just add the controller_support gem to your Gemfile

    gem 'controller_support'

Usage

To define a module as a controller support you just need to extend it with ControllerSupport::Base it can then act as a mixin which you can include into Controllers or any other object.

module UserSupport
    extend ControllerSupport::Base

    helper_method :current_user, :user_signed_in
    before_filter :must_be_signed_in
    # ControllerSupport also support after_filter and around_filter

    def current_user
        @user ||= User.find(session[:user_id])
    end

    def user_signed_in?
        current_user.present?
    end

    def must_be_signed_in
        redirect_to sign_up_path unless user_signed_in?
    end

end

To use the support just include it in the controller of your choice

class ItemController < ApplicationController
    include UserSupport

    skip_before_filter :must_be_signed_in, :only => :new

    def new
        render :inline => "this is just an example"
    end 

    def show
        current_user.item.find(params[:id])
    end
end

ActiveSupport::Concern reading material

If you don't know about ActiveSupport::Concern and why it's an awesome thing you should read these stuff

• The official documentation
• Concerning yourself with ActiveSupport::Concern - This blog post covers everything you need to know
• Concerning ActiveSupport::Concern
• Extending ActiveModel via ActiveSupport::Concern
• Trimming the fat from your controllers - A blog post I wrote that led to the creation of this gem.

License

This project rocks and uses MIT-LICENSE.