Is there a way to figure out what the current controller is from within the view?
For an example of why I would want to know this: if several controllers share the same layout, I may have a part in the layout ERB file where I want to highlight the current page's menu item based on the controller.
Maybe that is a bad approach. If so, what is the more preferred way to do this?
I'm interested to know about getting the name of the current controller either way, though.
(Obviously I could put something like @controller_name = 'users' in each controller; but that seems like the sort of thing Rails would've already done behind the scenes. So I'm just wondering if there's a built-in way.)
controller_name holds the name of the controller used to serve the current view.
In the Rails Guides, it says:
The params hash will always contain the :controller and :action keys, but you should use the methods controller_name and action_name instead to access these values
ActionController Parameters
So let's say you have a CSS class active , that should be inserted in any link whose page is currently open (maybe so that you can style differently) . If you have a static_pages controller with an about action, you can then highlight the link like so in your view:
<li>
<a class='button <% if controller.controller_name == "static_pages" && controller.action_name == "about" %>active<%end%>' href="/about">
About Us
</a>
</li>
#to get controller name:
<%= controller.controller_name %>
#=> 'users'
#to get action name, it is the method:
<%= controller.action_name %>
#=> 'show'
#to get id information:
<%= ActionController::Routing::Routes.recognize_path(request.url)[:id] %>
#=> '23'
# or display nicely
<%= debug Rails.application.routes.recognize_path(request.url) %>
reference
controller_path holds the path of the controller used to serve the current view. (ie: admin/settings).
and
controller_name holds the name of the controller used to serve the current view. (ie: settings).
