Using multiple controllers in one view in Rails

Question

I\'m working on something like a social networking mesh; I am using different API\'s from various websites, e.g. Last.FM, Delicious, Twitter, ...

I\'ve created one c

Answer 1

First off, you should put all of the data-storing and data-gathering methods into Resources and Models so they are accessible from all controllers. You can keep the internal data-mutating operations in your individual controllers though. Once you have it organized like this, you could do what Hobo does: create a controller just for the front page, "front_controller" if you will. Here you can display data gathered from all of your models and resources, as well as links to your other controller actions.

These are a few interesting thoughts on better organizing your models and controllers (fat models, skinny controllers is a rule of thumb. Since you said you are using other API's (like lastfm and twitter), you might want to take a look at this railscasts about creating non ActiveRecord models (models that are not tied to a database)

here is some pseudo code, keep in mind its really only targeted at your question.

#  pseudo code  

  class TwitterController < ApplicationController
    def index
      @services = {
        :twitter => TwitterModel.find(:all, ...),
      }
    end
    def update_twitter
      TwitterUpdaterClass.update { |twit|
        _m = TwitterModel.new 
        _m.message = twit.msg
        _m.from = twit.from
        # ..
        _m.save
      }
    end
  end


  class MyIndexController < ApplicationController
    def index
      @services = {
        :twitter => TwitterModel.find(:all, ...),
        :lastfm => LastFmModel.find(:all, ...)
      }
    end
  end

it might be much better to have background-workers update your rest-services instead a controller which you need to invoke every time you want to fetch recent tweets. here is nice article showing - 6 ways to run background jobs in rubyonrails

  # more pseudo code

  class TwitterWorker < BackgrounDRb::MetaWorker
    set_worker_name :twitter_worker
    def create(args = nil) # instead of TwitterController.update_twitter
      TwitterUpdaterClass.update { |twit|
        _m = TwitterModel.new 
        _m.message = twit.msg
        _m.from = twit.from
        # ..
        _m.save
      }
    end
  end