Rails - Jun 2005 - different views and behavior for same action and controller

Hi all,

I have 3 subdomains:
    www.dn.com
    admin.dn.com
    members.dn.com

I know how to detect the subdomain, so it''s not my question
(http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/HowToUseSubdomainsAsAccountKeys)

I want *.dn.com/categories/new to behave differently depending on the subdomain:
    www.dn.com/categories/new -> I want a 404
    admin.dn.com/categories/new -> a certain view is displayed
    members.dn.com/categories/new -> another view is displayed

Of course the controller action "/categories/create" will behave
differently depending on the subdomain.

My question is:

What is the best way to achieve this (after I stored the subdomain in
a variable)?
    - add a "if subdomain == ''admin'' then ... ; elsif
subdomain =''members'' then ..." to the
controller''s actions and to the category''s
views?
    - specify rails a different folder to look for the controllers and
the views depending on the subdomain (how?)
    - Have 3 different deployments sharing the same db (and the same Model???)
    - other...

Thank you very much
Xavier

I''m currently working on something similar (different
controllers/views for different domains).  I haven''t tested it, but it
seems like you could organize your controllers into modules (admin,
members, etc) and then use apache url rewriting to prefix the
controller path with your subdomain, so members.dn.com/categories/new
becomes members.dn.com/members/categories/new

That solution reminds me of the good old days when MSIE didn''t support
name-based virtual hosting, though.  It just isn''t very pretty :p

Tyler

On 6/20/05, Xavier Frenette
<xavierfrenette-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have 3 subdomains:
>     www.dn.com
>     admin.dn.com
>     members.dn.com
> 
> I know how to detect the subdomain, so it''s not my question
> (http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/HowToUseSubdomainsAsAccountKeys)
> 
> I want *.dn.com/categories/new to behave differently depending on the
subdomain:
>     www.dn.com/categories/new -> I want a 404
>     admin.dn.com/categories/new -> a certain view is displayed
>     members.dn.com/categories/new -> another view is displayed
> 
> Of course the controller action "/categories/create" will behave
> differently depending on the subdomain.
> 
> My question is:
> 
> What is the best way to achieve this (after I stored the subdomain in
> a variable)?
>     - add a "if subdomain == ''admin'' then ... ;
elsif subdomain => ''members'' then ..." to the
controller''s actions and to the category''s
> views?
>     - specify rails a different folder to look for the controllers and
> the views depending on the subdomain (how?)
>     - Have 3 different deployments sharing the same db (and the same
Model???)
>     - other...
> 
> Thank you very much
> Xavier
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

Did you get any useful responses to this?

I face a similar problem in an app I''m building - and the same issue 
also comes up with different views for logged in vs. not logged in, etc.

It seems like doing a bunch of if/else logic is very dirty, and there 
must be a simpler way.

For now, I''ve resorted to just NOT re-using the same controller for two
different things, but that forces me to have lines like

if subdomain == "members" redirect_to :controller =>
''home''

to accomodate everywhere people might end up...

-Matt



Xavier Frenette wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have 3 subdomains:
>     www.dn.com
>     admin.dn.com
>     members.dn.com
> 
> I know how to detect the subdomain, so it''s not my question
> (http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/HowToUseSubdomainsAsAccountKeys)
> 
> I want *.dn.com/categories/new to behave differently depending on the
subdomain:
>     www.dn.com/categories/new -> I want a 404
>     admin.dn.com/categories/new -> a certain view is displayed
>     members.dn.com/categories/new -> another view is displayed
> 
> Of course the controller action "/categories/create" will behave
> differently depending on the subdomain.
> 
> My question is:
> 
> What is the best way to achieve this (after I stored the subdomain in
> a variable)?
>     - add a "if subdomain == ''admin'' then ... ;
elsif subdomain => ''members'' then ..." to the
controller''s actions and to the category''s
> views?
>     - specify rails a different folder to look for the controllers and
> the views depending on the subdomain (how?)
>     - Have 3 different deployments sharing the same db (and the same
Model???)
>     - other...
> 
> Thank you very much
> Xavier
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

This is the solution I came up with:
1) I group my controllers into "modules" (explanations below)
2) Since I use subdomains to differentiate the "user type" (I have
admin.sd.com, members.sd.com and www.sd.com (the default)), I use
url_rewrite to redirect to the correct "module" and controller (as in
#1) as suggested by Tyler.

Explanations:
1) Controllers can be grouped in modules, so you can have 2 different
"categories" controllers:
    www.dn.com/members/categories/show/12
    www.dn.com/admin/categories/show/12
In this situation, you have a Categories controller in the members
module and a Categories controller in the admin module. (2 different
files with different (or same) actions that can do different things)

The best way to create them and learn how they work is to use the
controller generator:
    ruby script/generate controller members/Categories (where
"members" is your module)
(for help: ruby script/generate controller -h or
http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/ControllerGenerator)

This will create in your controllers/ directory a folder named
"members" which will contain the categories_controller.rb file. Open
it to see that the class declaration will be a little bit different
(for a newbie like me).

Use the generator since it will also create the "members" directory in
the "views" folder and  also in the test folder.

The default route map (:controller/:action/:id) will recognize your
module so you don''t have to create new routes.



2) About the subdomains: Instead of
www.dn.com/admin/categories/show/12, I wanted
admin.dn.com/categories/show/12.

I didn''t do it yet, but, as suggested by Tyler, I will probably use
url_rewrite to redirect admin.dn.com/controller/action/id to
www.dn.com/admin/controller/action/id

Hope it works :)

Xavier

2005/6/22, Matt Jankowski
<mjankowski-3V1LzDqIiU+4+7hldlPAjkEOCMrvLtNR@public.gmane.org>:
> Did you get any useful responses to this?
> 
> I face a similar problem in an app I''m building - and the same
issue
> also comes up with different views for logged in vs. not logged in, etc.
> 
> It seems like doing a bunch of if/else logic is very dirty, and there
> must be a simpler way.
> 
> For now, I''ve resorted to just NOT re-using the same controller
for two
> different things, but that forces me to have lines like
> 
> if subdomain == "members" redirect_to :controller =>
''home''
> 
> to accomodate everywhere people might end up...
> 
> -Matt
> 
> 
> Xavier Frenette wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have 3 subdomains:
> >     www.dn.com
> >     admin.dn.com
> >     members.dn.com
> >
> > I know how to detect the subdomain, so it''s not my question
> >
(http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/HowToUseSubdomainsAsAccountKeys)
> >
> > I want *.dn.com/categories/new to behave differently depending on the
subdomain:
> >     www.dn.com/categories/new -> I want a 404
> >     admin.dn.com/categories/new -> a certain view is displayed
> >     members.dn.com/categories/new -> another view is displayed
> > 
> > Of course the controller action "/categories/create" will
behave
> > differently depending on the subdomain.
> >
> > My question is:
> >
> > What is the best way to achieve this (after I stored the subdomain in
> > a variable)?
> >     - add a "if subdomain == ''admin'' then ... ;
elsif subdomain => > ''members'' then ..." to the
controller''s actions and to the category''s
> > views?
> >     - specify rails a different folder to look for the controllers and
> > the views depending on the subdomain (how?)
> >     - Have 3 different deployments sharing the same db (and the same
Model???)
> >     - other...
> >
> > Thank you very much
> > Xavier
> > _______________________________________________
> > Rails mailing list
> > Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> > http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

On Jun 22, 2005, at 10:17 AM, Matt Jankowski wrote:
> Did you get any useful responses to this?
>
> I face a similar problem in an app I''m building - and the same  
> issue also comes up with different views for logged in vs. not  
> logged in, etc.
>
> It seems like doing a bunch of if/else logic is very dirty, and  
> there must be a simpler way.
>
> For now, I''ve resorted to just NOT re-using the same controller
for
> two different things, but that forces me to have lines like
>
> if subdomain == "members" redirect_to :controller =>
''home''
>
> to accomodate everywhere people might end up...
>
> -Matt
I thought I''d post this idea in case it is helpful.  We also have an  
admin/member/public type setup for our application, and our main  
layout file (application.rhtml) is used for all types of users  
because there is a lot of common html across all user types.  So  
instead of duplicating much of the layout, we used the following  
helper method to include partials such as the "status bar" and the  
"menu bar" wherever they should appear in the layout:

   def render_partial_for_user_type(partial_name)
     if @session[''user''].nil?
       # Neither member nor admin is logged in
       return render_partial("layouts/public/" + partial_name)
     elsif @session[''user''].member?
         # Member is logged in
         return render_partial("layouts/member/" + partial_name)
     elsif @session[''user''].admin?
       # Admin is logged in
       return render_partial("layouts/admin/" + partial_name)
     else
       return ""
       logger.warning "Rendering layout for an unknown user type:  
user is not public, member or admin."
     end
   end

Then, a simple call like this will render the correct partial:

<%= render_partial_for_user_type(''menu_bar'') %>

Duane Johnson
(canadaduane)




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