Handling has_one nested resource in Rails 3

Question

I got a User model and a About model. The about model is a page where users have more info about them that due its nature is more appropriate to have it on a separate model rather than in the user model.

I want to be able to route it to something like /:username/about and get all the verbs working on that path (GET POST, PUT, DELETE).

/:username/about
/:username/about/edit
/:username/about

This is what I already have

# routes.rb
resources :users do 
  resources :abouts
end

match ':username/about' => 'abouts#show', :as => :user_about
match ':username/about/add' => 'abouts#new', :as => :user_new_about    
match ':username/about/edit' => 'abouts#edit', :as => :user_edit_about

And in the models I have

# about.rb
belongs_to :user

# user.rb
has_one :about

When I'm doing a post or put to /roses/about It's interpreting It as a show

Started POST "/roses/about" for 127.0.0.1 at Sun Feb 27 16:24:18 -0200 2011
  Processing by AboutsController#show as HTML

I'm probably missing the declaration in the routes, but doesn't it get messy declaring each verb for a resource when it's different from the default?

What's the simplest and cleaner way to archive this?

Answer 1

You can use scope and controller blocks to cut down on the verbiage:

  scope "/:username" do
    controller :abouts do
      get 'about' => :show
      post 'about' => :create
      get 'about/add' => :new
      get 'about/edit' => :edit
    end
  end

which produces:

     about GET /:username/about(.:format) {:action=>"show", :controller=>"abouts"}
           POST /:username/about(.:format) {:action=>"create", :controller=>"abouts"}
 about_add GET /:username/about/add(.:format) {:controller=>"abouts", :action=>"new"}
about_edit GET /:username/about/edit(.:format) {:controller=>"abouts", :action=>"edit"}

Answer 2

When using a has_one, it might make sense to declare it as a singular resource in your routes. Meaning

resources :users do
  resource :about # notice "resource" and not "resources"
end

And if you want to override the paths for new/edit, add a :path_names option to the resource/resources-call:

resources :about, :path_names => { :new => 'add', :edit => 'edit' }

The official documentation has lots of other tips and tricks for routing as well.