Rails Utilizing a Model

Question

I am working on a rails app that on the view side makes an Ajax call every 5 minutes or so to a controller to check if there are any new messages that were created for a particular user. Now I know the way of Rails (or MVC for that matter) is to use Fat Models/Skinny Controllers, how would I call my model from my controller so that the data is being returned in the model?

Here is my controller:

def get_all_notes_by_page
    if request.xhr?
      return Note.where("page_id = ?", params[:page_id]).count
    end
  end

Thanks in advance for all of the help!

Answer 1

I'd set up periodical listener (this code is using Prototype library):

new PeriodicalExecuter(function(pe) {
  new Ajax.Request('/controllername/get_all_notes_by_page', {
    onSuccess: function(response) {
      // compare response value with some global variable 
    }
  });
}, 300);

and on the controller side:

def get_all_notes_by_page
  respond_to do |format|
    format.js { render :text => Page.find(params[:page_id]).notes.count.to_s }
  end
end

This controller method is skinny enough, but if you really want to make it shorter, you can define a count_notes method in the Page model.

Answer 2

if request.xhr?
  Note.count_by_page_id(params[:page_id])
end