Rails - Jul 2005 - Sequenced actions mixin for controllers

I made this mixin to help with my application, we have an order form where the
user can order a number of services, such as local, long distance, wireless
service and all that. No matter what they order, there are things we need to get
like customer information, billing information, other things that are common
amongst a few like credit card information, shipping address, and then pages
that are unique to one product/service, like choosing a wireless calling plan.
This utility allows me to string a sequence of actions together and eliminate
the "linked list" approach where links are embedded all over the
place. Inserting a new action or a different behavior in the middle of your app
is as simple as it can be. Some basic conditional code is also allowed to test
whether or not the action should be displayed or skipped over.

This is halfway in between the current rails behavior and frameworks like
seaside, or the continuation support in wee. Although it is not as powerful, I
think this method offers a number of advantages like the ability to incorporate
your application flow into a class hierarchy. I figured some other people might
be interested in using something like this, some in the IRC channel have
expressed interest in it. I''ve been using it for a few weeks and it
appears to work fine.

-Jeff



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Nice work, Jeff!  This looks like a very clean module that would add  
a lot for its simplicity.  I''ve saved it in my toolbox.

On Jul 29, 2005, at 2:55 PM, Jeffrey Moss wrote:
> <sequenced.rb>
Duane Johnson
(canadaduane)

Wow, thanks, this will come in really handy. I always find myself not 
abstracting this pattern which is so much maintainance work and really 
ugly. Thanks a lot.

Maybe this can go directly into Rails as an Act or something similiar. 
This is such a common pattern.

Sascha