Sexy Nested Resources

Installation

script/plugin install http://sexy-nested-resources.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/sexy_nested_resources

Determination of parent resources

This plugin adds the ability to determine the parent resource types. AbstractRequest, ActionController and ActionView all have a method called parent_resource_types().

Given this routing table:

  map.resources :changes
  map.resources :products do |products|
    products.resources :releases do |releases|
      releases.resources :changes
    end
  end

parent_resource_types() will return [:product, :release] for /products/:product_id/releases/:release_id/changes and [] for /changes

Sexy Context Sensitive url_helpers

The most significant feature of of this plugin is context sensitive url_helpers.

Given this routing table

  map.resources :changes

  map.resources :releases do |releases|
    releases.resources :changes
  end

  map.resources :products do |products|
    products.resources :releases do |releases|
      releases.resources :changes
    end
  end

The helper changes_path will return /changes, /releases/:release_id/changes or /products/:product_id/releases/:release_id/changes depending on the context the helper is called in.

The context is defined by return value of parent_resource_types().

ex:

  if: parent_resource_types => []                   then: changes_path => "/changes"
  if: parent_resource_types => [:release]           then: changes_path => "/releases/:release_id/changes"
  if: parent_resource_types => [:product, :release] then: changes_path => "/products/:product_id/releases/:release_id/changes"

Preloading Parent Resources

The plugin also adds a before filter which loads all the parent resources and assigns them to your controller.

To activate this functionality simply add the preload_parent_resources() call in any controller. When you activated the preloader a parent resource called Project will be a assigned to the @project attribute. The last parent resource will also be assigned to the @parent_resource attribute.

This method also accepts an option hash used for the before_filter.