How can I dynamically determine which model a controller is controlling?

Question

I'm writing a Rails plugin, and need to be able to dynamically determine which model a controller is associated with. For example, if I have a PeopleController, I need a clean way to determine that the controller handles Person models.

I've had a look through the API and haven't found a method for it.

Is the only way to do this as a regexp combined with some ActiveSupport inflection trickery like singularize?

If so, are there any pitfalls with this approach? What are the edge cases?

Answer 1

It's only a convention that a controller and model are related, so there is really no way to do it.

What are you trying to do?

Answer 2

Assuming you are following the Rails naming convention for model and controller names, you can do the following to get the model name/class.

# In a controller instance
klass_name = controller_name.camelize.gsub(/Controller$/, '').singularize
klass = klass_name.constantize

Answer 3

Iam just modifing a litle KandadaBoggu answer to make it more automatic for any instance of the controller.

# In a controller instance
klass_name = self.class.to_s.gsub(/Controller$/, '').singularize
klass = klass_name.constantize