Creating a Rails Website - Implementing multiple models on one page.

Question

I've got more comfortable with Rails and want to design something more than a blog site.

What I want to do is build something that has a dashboard style 'home page' - i.e. a number of dynamic sections based on different models.

To create this page, would I create a whole controller, model and view?

A quick example that everyone should recognize is the Facebook profile page (not what I'm trying to create!), which has images, posts, about, etc all in once place.

Another (fantastic) example is the treehouse application home-page, which shows reward videos, points, your latest track etc.

From what I know of rails, the data and logic for these sections would all come from different models, so maybe I just need one controller called home.rb that draws upon my multiple models? A root-path request would be routed to the home.rb controller.

Then I would create a view called home.html.erb and present the different arrays and variables provided by the controller?

Any advice / resources would be very much appreciated!

Thomas

Answer 1 · 2014-06-29T19:01:39Z

June 29, 2014 7:01pm

If you are creating a dashboard, I recommend creating a dashboard controller and a dashboard view. You don't need a model, since as you said, you are pulling a bunch of other models together to be displayed (pictures, statuses, etc).

Then in your dashboard controller, you can just initiate a bunch of instance variables to be be displayed in the view. For example:

#dashboard controller
def index
   @pictures = current_user.pictures
   @statuses = current_user.statuses
end

Then in your view, you can loop over them all to be displayed in on one page:

#dashboard view
<%= @pictures.each do |pic| %>
 #however you want to display them
<% end %>

Note that you could also just add a new method to your users_controller and call it dashboard. I have a dashboard controller because I have more than just a dashboard, I also have data, and leaderboards, and all that in my app that I put under that (since they all come from different models).

Hope that helps!

Answer 2 · 2014-06-29T19:33:18Z

June 29, 2014 7:33pm

Nice! Thanks for clarifying :)

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thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

Creating a Rails Website - Implementing multiple models on one page.

2 Answers

Brandon Barrette

Brandon Barrette

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn

thomascawthorn