Best practices to handle routes for STI subclasses in rails

Question

My Rails views and controllers are littered with redirect_to, link_to, and form_for method calls. Sometimes link_to and <

Answer 1

hackish,but just another one to the list of solutions.

class Parent < ActiveRecord::Base; end

Class Child < Parent
  def class
    Parent
  end
end

works on rails 2.x and 3.x

Answer 2

The cleanest solution I found is to add the following to the base class:

def self.inherited(subclass)
  super

  def subclass.model_name
    super.tap do |name|
      route_key = base_class.name.underscore
      name.instance_variable_set(:@singular_route_key, route_key)
      name.instance_variable_set(:@route_key, route_key.pluralize)
    end
  end
end

It works for all subclasses and is much safer than overriding the entire model name object. By targeting only the route keys, we solve the routing problems without breaking I18n or risking any potential side effects caused by overriding the model name as defined by Rails.

Answer 3

I suggest you take a look at : https://stackoverflow.com/a/605172/445908, using this method will enable you to use "form_for".

ActiveRecord::Base#becomes

Answer 4

Use type in the routes:

resources :employee, controller: 'person', type: 'Employee' 

http://samurails.com/tutorial/single-table-inheritance-with-rails-4-part-2/

Answer 5

I had the same problem. After using STI, the form_for method was posting to the wrong child url.

NoMethodError (undefined method `building_url' for

I ended up adding in the extra routes for the child classes and pointing them to the same controllers

 resources :structures
 resources :buildings, :controller => 'structures'
 resources :bridges, :controller => 'structures'

Additionally:

<% form_for(@structure, :as => :structure) do |f| %>

in this case structure is actually a building (child class)

It seems to work for me after doing a submit with form_for.

Answer 6

I'm in favor of using PolymorphicRoutes or url_for to dynamically generate routes based on the resource, any namespace, etc.

https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionDispatch/Routing/PolymorphicRoutes.html

https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionDispatch/Routing/UrlFor.html

polymorphic_url([:admin, @article, @comment])
# => admin_article_comment_url(@article, @comment)

edit_polymorphic_path(@post) 
# => "/posts/1/edit"

With admin namespace

url_for([:admin, Role])
# => "admin/roles" # index

url_for([:admin, Role, action: :new])
# => "admin/roles/new" # new

url_for([:admin, @role])
# => "admin/roles/1" # show; for destroy, use link "method: :delete"

url_for([:edit, :admin, @role])
# => "admin/roles/1/edit" # edit