post

This is in relation to an older post about tabbed navigation. No matter the implementation, I always seem to match controller names with tab/link/section names. But I’m realizing that’s simply too coupled.

These days, I name my controllers in the context of a resource. And now that I’m adopting namespaces for privileged access, it’s likely that I’ll have controllers having the same controller_name but different intentions, and I wouldn’t necessarily want a section highlighted in both cases. Besides, adding a controller should not force me to consider a tab, or navigation at all for that matter. It’s more important that it makes sense within the code base.

So I’ve updated my implementation.

# views/layouts/application.html.erb
navigation :home, :projects, :about, :contact, :admin

# helpers/application_helper.rb
def navigation(*links)
  items = ''
  links.each do |link| 
    css = (link == @current_tab ? 'current' : '')
    link != :admin ? items << tab(link, css) : (items << tab(link, css) if logged_in?)
  end
  content_tag :ul, items
end

The tab(link, css) helper just constructs the link. And to set the current tab:

# controllers/application.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_filter :set_current_tab
  protected
    def set_current_tab
      # will default to controller_name if @current_tab
      # has not been set by another controller
      @current_tab ||= controller.controller_name.to_sym
    end
end

# override the 'set_current_tab' method in any controller
# if a name other than the controller_name is desired
#
# For example:
# controllers/admin/authorized_controller.rb
class Admin::AuthorizedController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :authenticate
  protected
    def set_current_tab
      @current_tab = :admin
    end
end

By implementing the tabs this way I’ve banned the directory authentication and reverted back to an AuthorizedController, as that allows me to easily authenticate and set the admin tab for all administrative controllers.

Another solution would be to leave it as it were and override controller_name, but that didn’t feel right since it would’ve completely distorted the point of the controller_name in the first place. And so I didn’t do it.

It’s not like this is rocket science, I just thought I’d give an update.