Daily Refactor #79: Convert Controller to REST Controller

The Refactoring

Today’s refactoring took me quite a bit of setup work. I wanted to convert the InvoiceController to a REST controller in order to take advantage of all the built in helpers in Rails. I’m only going to show the routing changes I made, if want to dig deeper into the change there are view and test changes in the commit.

Before

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# config/routes.rb
# ... Empty ...
 
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# test/integration/routing_test.rb
require "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../test_helper"
 
class RoutingTest  'invoice', :action => 'index', :id => 'name'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/new/name", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'new', :id => 'name'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/autocreate/name", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'autocreate', :id => 'name'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/show/name", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'show', :id => 'name'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/edit/name", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'edit', :id => 'name'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/autofill/name", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'autofill', :id => 'name'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/outstanding/name", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'outstanding', :id => 'name'
 
 
    should_route :post, "/invoice/create/name", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'create', :id => 'name'
    should_route :post, "/invoice/update/name", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'update', :id => 'name'
    should_route :post, "/invoice/destroy/name", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'destroy', :id => 'name'
  end
 
end

After

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# config/routes.rb
ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
  map.resources(:invoice,
                :collection => {
                  :autocreate => :get,
                  :autofill => :get
                },
                :member => {
                  :outstanding => :get
                })
end
 
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# test/integration/routing_test.rb
require "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../test_helper"
 
class RoutingTest  'invoice', :action => 'index'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/new", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'new'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/autocreate", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'autocreate'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/100", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'show', :id => '100'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/100/edit", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'edit', :id => '100'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/autofill", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'autofill'
    should_route :get, "/invoice/100/outstanding", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'outstanding', :id => '100'
 
 
    should_route :post, "/invoice", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'create'
 
    should_route :put, "/invoice/100", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'update', :id => '100'
 
    should_route :delete, "/invoice/100", :controller => 'invoice', :action => 'destroy', :id => '100'
  end
 
end

Review

This refactoring, combined with removing the project requirement, has really helped to update the design of the Invoice Plugin. After a few more bug fixes, it should be ready for it’s first official release (over two years in the making).

Reference commit