Mixing Single Table Inheritance and RESTful routes

Rails
1

I am trying to implement a restful app, but I have found some problems
with the design, when I have thought in implementig STI.

I will try to explain.
Only as a example, you may suppose this models

Class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :widgets
end

Class Customer < Person
end

Class Employee < Person
end

Class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :person
end

Then I would like to define these resources in config/routes.rb
map.resources :customers do |customer|
customer.resources :widgets
end
map.resources :employees do |employee|
employee.resources :widgets
end

Is this the correct way to abord this problem?
Can I go in the REST style way for this case?

I will appreciate any comment of someone with some experience with these
questios.

Thanks

Juan M. Cervera

2

I have tried to find a solution, with no luck.
There is no problem in defining the routes in routes.rb, but it seems
that this will not work because I have only one set of named routes for
the widgets resources.

Does anybody see a better way or an alternative for this problem?

It is important for me because in my real problem I have several classes
that I can implement with STI, they are different resources in my app
and each one needs its resftul controller. But they all have the same
nested resource and I want only one restful controller, for all the
cases.
I pretend to be DRY in the design.

Anybody thinks there is a way to implement this?
Please give me some advise.

Thanks in advance.

Juan M. cervera

3

I think I have tried very hard and still no luck.

I can have the restful routes working without problems
map.resources :customers do |customer|
customer.resources :widgets,
:name_prefix => ‘customer_’
end
map.resources :employees do |employee|
employee.resources :widgets
:name_prefix => ‘employee_’
end

Now I have named routes like customer_new_widget_path or
employee_widgets_path but I found difficult to be in the DRY way, with
only on controller for widgets, mostly for the associated views.

Is possible that nobody has ever tried something like this?
Or I can’t explain the question in a correct way, and nobody understands
me.
Well, I think I’m going to abandon this idea.

Thanks
Juan M. Cervera