Mixing different models in one list in a view

Question

I have three models: paste, snippet and tutorial. I want to show the newest of all of them mixed in one list, like this on the page:

<ul>
<li>Just a paste</li>
<li>The worst snippet ever (-10202343 kudos) (1 quadrillion comments)</li>
<li>Just another paste</li>
<li>Ruby on Rails tutorial (5 kudos) (2 comments)</li>
<li>Another snippet</li>
</ul>

Ordered by date. The problem is that I want to mix these three models in one list. All models have specific attributes (e.g. snippet and tutorial have tags, all have titles, tutorials and snippets have have kudos, only paste has a private boolean (so it should not be listed)).

How can I do some kind of mixing these different models in my view? Thanks

Answer 1

Grab a list of the "events" or whatever in your controller

@events = Paste.find_all
@events << Snippet.find(:order => "votes", :limit => 1)
@events << Tutorial.find_all

then in your view

<%
    @events.each do |event|
      display_snippet(event) if event.class == Snippet
      display_tutorial(event) if event.class == Tutorial
    end   
%>

there are a few ways to handle the view part of it, but it seems pretty straight forward. In this example, display_snippet and display_event would be helper methods but it might be cleaner to use partials.

Answer 2

I would solve this at the database-level, introducing a PublishedItem, and the PublishedItem then points to either a Paste, a Snippet or a Tutorial. That would solve creating the list of items: just select the 5 latest published items. And from a published item you can then find the correct item, and show it.