In my "routes.rb" file I have the following line:
resource :users
which gives me a bunch of named routes for accessing my User model in a RESTful manner.
Now, I've made some additions to the User model including creating a special class of user. These are still stored in the User model but there is a "special" flag in the database that identifies them as special.
So, is it possible to create special_users resource? For example, I'd like to have a "special_users_path" as a named route to "/special_users" which will return an index of only the special users when you perform a GET on the URL.
Is there a way to do this?
In Rails routing, a 'resource' refers to the standard 7 routes that are created for RESTful resources: index, show, new, create, edit, update and destroy. Normally that is enough, but sometimes you might want to create another action.
In the model, you want to create a scope that only returns special users:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
scope :special, where(:special => true)
end
On the controller side, there are two ways to go about this. What you are suggesting is the creation of an additional action:
match "/users/special" => "users#special"
resource :users
In the controller, your special action would return the scope you just created:
class UsersController < ApplicationController
def special
@users = User.special
end
end
That will do what you ask, but I would suggest NOT doing it this way. What if you add other flags later that you want to search by? What if you want to search by multiple flags? This solution isn't flexible enough for that. Instead, keep the routes the way they are:
resource :users
and just add an additional line to your controller:
class UsersController < ApplicationController
def index
@users = User.all
@users = @users.special if params[:special]
end
end
and now, when you want to display special users, simply direct the user to /users?special=true
This approach is much more future-proof, IMO.
(This answer is assuming Rails-3. If you're still using 2.3 let me know)