DHH posted about merging merb’s provides/display into rails. He proposed used a dual of respond_to and respond_with, similar to merb’s provides/display, with a couple tweaks to allow each action to respond to different types. There are a couple things about the API he suggested which I don’t love:
I don’t like the way respond_with(@deals, :to => [:html, :json, :xml]) reads, why not flip that around and do respond_to(:html, :json, xml, :with => Deal.new). This would work very well with how the current responds_to method works in rails, just adding an :with option to allow converting that object instead of rendering a partial. (see the index action below)
When using the class-level respond_to, we could use respond_to(:with => Deal.new), or keep an alias of repond_with(Deal.new) (see the new action below)
It would be nice to have an easy way to use the defaults for some response types, but allow customization for others. (see the create action below)
class DealsController < SubjectsController
respond_to :html, :xml, :json
def index
@deals = Deal.all
respond_to(:html, :xml, :json, :atom, :with => @deals)
end
def new
respond_to(:with => Deal.new)
# uses the class-level defined response types (html, xml, and json)
# maybe this is a good case for also having respond_with(Deal.new)
end
def create
@deal = Deal.create!(params[:deal])
respond_to(:xml, :json, :with => @deal) do |format|
format.html { redirect_to @deal }
end
end
end
