Routes and Embedded Documents

Following my previous post Mongoid custom relation between embedded documents

Interesting how to set-up Routes and MVC for embedded documents? I'll try to tell you how I did it.

As I mentioned in previous post, my main document Event looks like

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class Event
  # cutted
  embeds_many :acts
  embeds_many :areas
end

Routing

In routes.rb

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  resources :events do
    resources :acts
    resources :areas
  end

Now we can access the Acts and Areas with urls like /events/:event_id/acts/, /events/:event_id/acts/:id, and same for areas

To see the all the routes you can use command rake routes in terminal

Controllers

In all controllers for embedded documents, we need to have access to parent document. We can achieve this by adding before_filter to our controllers.

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class ActsController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :check_event!

    def check_event!
    @event = Event.find(params[:event_id]) rescue nil

    if !@event
      redirect_to root_path, :alert => "Event not found!"
    end
  end

And also we need to change the actions to use our parent document

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  def index
    @acts = @event.acts.all
    # Respond code
  end

  def show
    @act = @event.acts.find(params[:id])
    # Respond code
  end

Also, we need to change the creation method, so the child document will be added to the parent

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  def create
    @act = Act.new(params[:act])

    respond_to do |format|
      if @event.acts << @act
        @event.save
        format.html { redirect_to [@event, @act], notice: 'Act was successfully created.' }
        # Other format code
      else
        # Else code
      end
    end
  end

Notice the adding code @event.acts << @act and the redirect code redirect_to [@event, @act]

Views

For every link_to in your view, you need to add relation to Event document, and also some paths needs changing.

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= link_to 'Show', [@event, @act]
= link_to 'Edit', edit_event_act_path(@event, act)
= link_to 'New Act', new_event_act_path

For forms, I'm using simple_form gem, but basicaly the only thing you need to change is to put the @event there

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= simple_form_for([@event, @act], html:{class:'form-horizontal'}) do |f|
  # inputs go here

I hope this short post will help you getting started…