Rails - Mar 2005 - Advice needed: implement hierarchy of directories site as Rails MVC?

Hi,

Thanks to the replies on my earlier question about Rails applications
that don''t feature a relational database, It seems Rails could be a
good
platform for my web project.

What I need to do is present a website that (for now) shows the contents
of a hierarchy of directories.  The URLs to access the site will be:

         http://example.org/contents/<dir>/list
         http://example.org/contents/<dir>/<subdir>/list
        
http://example.org/contents/<dir>/<subdir>/<subsubdir>/list

Where <dir>, <subdir>, <subsubdir> etc are directory names.
Each view of
a directory would contain hyperlinks to the contents of the directory.
The only action supported for now on a directory is "list", no edits, 
deletes, updates etc are allowed.

As a complete Rails newbie, my initial thought was having one model
per directory "level" with one controller per level would nicely
reflect
the structure of the hierarchy.  The "contents" controller could
somehow
lookup a controller for the "<dir>" level, the
"<dir>" level controller
could somehow hand over control to the "<subdir>" controller and
so on.

But is this the most Rails oriented way to do this?  Is it better to
have one super "contents" controller that analyzes each whole URL
and coordinates the model and view to use?  I''m guessing I also need
to avoid the scaffold scripts that assume use of ActiveRecord?

Any advice on the most Rails-oriented way to do this much appreciated,

Cheers,

Stu

G''day Railers,

I''ve only been looking at this for a couple of days, so please
forgive me if this is a stupid question.  I''m trying to build a
small issue management system as a learning exercise in Rails,
and I''m having troubly creating a new issue.

My issue model looks like this:

----------------------------------------
class Issue < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :initiator, :foreign_key => "initiator"
    belongs_to :owner, :foreign_key => "owner"
    belongs_to :assignee, :foreign_key => "assigned_to"
    belongs_to :project
    belongs_to :subproject
    has_many :comments
end
----------------------------------------

and my user & related types models look like this:

----------------------------------------
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :comments, :foreign_key => ''submitter''
    has_many :projects, :foreign_key =>
''default_issue_owner''
    has_many :subprojects, :foreign_key =>
''default_issue_owner''
    validates_uniqueness_of :email

    def full_name
        return first_name + " " + last_name
    end

end

class Initiator < User
    has_many :issues, :foreign_key => ''initiator''
end
   
class Owner < User
    has_many :issues, :foreign_key => ''owner''
end
   
class Assignee < User
    has_many :issues, :foreign_key => ''assignee''
end
----------------------------------------

In my issues controller, I''m getting a list of all the possible
initiators, owners, and assignees to populate the form:

----------------------------------------
class IssuesController < ApplicationController
    scaffold :issue
   
    def new
        @projects = Project.find_all
        @subprojects = Subproject.find_all
        @initiators = Initiator.find_all
        @owners = Owner.find_all
        @assignees = Assignee.find_all
    end
   
  
    def list
        @issues = Issue.find_all
    end
   
end
----------------------------------------

My new.rhtml view for issues then contains code to display
these user lists as names:

----------------------------------------
<p>
<label for="issue_initiator">Initiator</label>
<br />
<%= collection_select("issue", "initiator" , @initiators,
"id",
"full_name") %>
</p>
----------------------------------------

When I try to use this configuration to create a new issue,
I get the following error:

----------------------------------------
ActiveRecord::AssociationTypeMismatch in Issues#create
Initiator expected, got String
...
Request
*Parameters*: {:controller=>"issues",
:action=>"create",
:issue=>{"target_date(3i)"=>"19",
"subproject_id"=>"1",
"project_id"=>"1",
"assigned_to"=>"1",
"initiation_date(1i)"=>"2005",
"initiator"=>"1",
"initiation_date(2i)"=>"3",
"description"=>"sfsf",
"initiation_date(3i)"=>"19",
"status_id"=>"", "owner"=>"1",
"target_date(1i)"=>"2005",
"target_date(2i)"=>"3"}}
----------------------------------------


Can anyone explain to me what I need to add to make Rails
map the integer value it gets back from the form to the Initiator
it represents?

Thanks,

Doug Gorley <douggorley-fVOoFLC7IWo@public.gmane.org>