WWR - Railsplugin: Inferred Routes

Inferred Routes

DESCRIPTION

This plugin lets you do shorter versions of named nested RESTful routes. I’ve written it because I don’t like to have to inline the objects from which the route elements need to be gleaned, if those objects can be inferred from ONE object.

For example: given a nest of routes:

map.resources :schools do |s|
  s.resources :departments do |d|
    d.resources :teachers
  end
end

I don’t like to have to specify all of the components of the nest, like this:

teacher_url(@school,@department,@teacher)

I would rather just do:

teacher_url(@teacher)

and have the nest be inferred, as if I’d written:

teacher_url(@teacher.department.school, @teacher.department, @teacher)

Similarly, I’d like a plural route:

teachers_url(@department)

to be interpreted as:

teachers_url(@department.school, @department)

I’d even like to “fall off the cliff” and specify a route using something that isn’t technically part of it:

teachers_url(@teacher)

expanding to:

teachers_url(@teacher.department.school, @teacher.department)

There’s no teacher in the route, but this lets me generate, say, a URL for creating a new teacher in the same department as a known teacher.

(The variables don’t have to be instance variables; that’s just for consistency in the examples.)

USAGE

SINGULAR:

a_url(z,y,x,...c,b,a)

becomes:

a_url(a)

and z,y,x…c,b will be inferred. The nest has to match the object associations; that is, all of these must be present:

a.b       some_b
some_b.c  some_c
...
some_y.z == some_z

PLURAL:

as_url(z,y,x,...b)

becomes:

as_url(b)

You can also use an ‘a’:

as_url(a)

and the b-object will be gleaned from the a. The cascade of object associations has to work all the way through the list.

TESTING

I’ve got tests against a particular application I’ve written. (They all pass :-) I haven’t packaged the whole test application here. I’ll work on a non-cumbersome way of doing that….

Please report any bugs or improvements to me. Thanks.

AUTHOR

inferred_routes is by David A. Black, Director of Ruby Power and Light, LLC.

VERSION

This is inferred_routes version 0.1.0.

See file “MIT-LICENSE”