From: ritchie <ritchie@...>
Date: 2005-04-12T10:14:38+09:00
Subject: Re: rails use case

>What does your current PHP do?
>How does it do it?

My current PHP is a framework that creates the menu system from the
directory  structure. So if my content editors add a new directory with
an index.php then the next client to connect has the new content
available. I don't have to get involved in the editing of simple pages,
so it's wiki-ish and has a number of zope features like acquisition of
pages.  I'm trying to recreate that in Rails as it works well in
practice and my users are familiar with the ideas.

My current URLS look like what I posted earlier

http://localhost/apps/app/switcher.php?path=/Account/Personal

would render index.php in the Account/Personal directory (or
recursively in directories above if not found in Account (zopeish)).
The switcher.php includes the relevant file, however the index.php is
still fully functional in terms of I can get at the db and have as much
complicated code in the view as I want. This seems to be what I can't
do in rails in the view. As an aside each one of my pages can have it's
own controller a mirroring index.prc which can be optionally included
before the index.php for hardcore php you may not want the user to see.


>That's
>somewhat anti-MVC, because in MVC it is the controller which calls the
>template

Yes, I thought it may hence my query on if this is a valid use case.
However, I'm not sure that rails can't do what I want yet. I suspect it
can easily. The problem is my pages are added by users when they feel
like it, and I need to optionally add controller like functionality if
it requires specialised behaviour. Actually maybe what I'm lookig for
is using a rails "helper" on the page??? All I'm trying to do is get
access to the model and/or specialised code from the page without a
priori knowledge in the controller itself, i.e. is there some other way
of embedding arbitrary code in the view other than from a controller?
Hope that makes sense?

Ritchie