Rails - Dec 2008 - Complex polymorphic routes

I''ve used polymorphic routes which seem to not be QUITE what most
people mean when they use this term.  Most discussions are intended to
handle things like:

  /blogs/1/comments
  /article/1/comments

where the comments controller handles different parent types.

I have often used something more like this:

  /users/1/domains
  /domains

Each of these are "scoped" such that if a params[:user_id] is present,
it will scope the domains list, via something like:

  def index
    load_user
    if @user
      @domains = @user.domains
    else
      @domains = Domains.find :all
    end
  end

  private

  def load_user
    if params[:user_id]
      @user = User.find params[:user_id]
    end
  end

This technique works well for me, even if not QUITE so DRY as I would
like.  However, when the paths get more complicated:

  /users/1/domains/2/records/3
  /domains/2/records/3
  /records/3

my technique quickly becomes at best complicated, and at worse
impossible to implement and debug easily.  This is mainly because some
operations are ALWAYS scoped (modifying a domain, for instance) while
others are not.  I suppose I could just check permissions on each
operation and only scope the index method, as that is the only one I
really want to narrow down data for.  Once a user lists their domains,
I don''t care if it is used via the /domains/ prefix directly.
However, this means that permission checking will have to occur, where
by scoping it I manage to avoid having to do a lot of this, as all I
need to do is check if curent_user.id == params[:user_id] or if
current_user is an admin.

The additional scoping for direct operations on a specific item seem
to be most of the problem, as it is mostly unnecessary.

Do others have solutions to this sort of problem that are cleaner than
what I have done, or might end up doing?

Thanks,
--Michael

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