Writing admin / client applications

[Eric.Coleman]

I am attempting my first rails app now.. I got all the relationship down (wasn't that hard after looking at the docs)

But, I have a question. How do you handle an app that should have 2 portions to it, an admin app, and a client app.

I am assuming it would be 2 different rails apps that just work from the same database. Am I wrong to assume this?

-- Eric

[rossriley]

Better to have an 'admin' controller within the same application.

[Eric.Coleman]

But, then, does everything have to bee off the admin controller? Or can I do something like admin/users/edit/1/

?

[Snowbird122]

In the DHH Agile development with Rails book, he builds a ecommerce app, including frontend and backend. He used a separate controller for each.

[Eric.Coleman]

In the DHH Agile development with Rails book, he builds a ecommerce app, including frontend and backend. He used a separate controller for each.

So, the entire app would only have 2 controllers? If this isn't the case, can you provide me with an example as I don't have a copy of the book... yet.

[Snowbird122]

Sure. You can get all the code here:
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/t...ails/code.html

It is the Depot application (use the final version).

For what it is worth, the book is very good.

[vgarcia]

So, the entire app would only have 2 controllers? If this isn't the case, can you provide me with an example as I don't have a copy of the book... yet.

You can subclass your controllers too, so you can for example have a Products controller in both the admin and client sections. For example, these two commands will create product controllers, one for public use and one for admins*:

ruby script/generate scaffold Admin::Product
ruby script/generate controller Public::Product

Your controllers would then be under /admin/products/ and /public/products/ respctively.

Off Topic:

* I created a controller on the public side instead of a scaffold because you don't need all the CRUD stuff exposed to the outside

[Luke Redpath]

So, the entire app would only have 2 controllers? If this isn't the case, can you provide me with an example as I don't have a copy of the book... yet.

No. Use as many controllers as you need but you will generally need more than two otherwise you would probably end up with massive controllers which is poor design. Controllers should be like any other class, with only as many methods as needed, and focussed on a particular subject.

The best option is to take advantage of Rails' built-in routing for Ruby modules.

Create a folder in your controller folder called "admin". Then, for all controllers inside this folder, make them part of an Admin module, so you might have a user controller for both the admin and front end:

# /controllers/user_controller.rb
# http://mysite.com/user/

class UserController < ActionController::Base
  # etc
end

# /controllers/admin/user_controller.rb
# http://mysite.com/admin/

class Admin::UserController < ActionController::Base
  # etc
end

In fact, the mapping of URLs to modules makes it very easy to break whole parts of your application up into individual modules and can be a good way of organising your controllers in general.

[Luke Redpath]

Oh, and vinnie's command line above will generate the neccesary folders and files for you.