Is it a bad idea to reload routes dynamically in Rails?

Question

I have an application I\'m writing where I\'m allowing the administrators to add aliases for pages, categories, etc, and I would like to use a different controller/action depend

Answer 1

First, as other have suggested, create a catch-all route at the bottom of routes.rb:

map.connect ':name', :controller => 'aliases', :action => 'show'

Then, in AliasesController, you can use render_component to render the aliased action:

class AliasesController < ApplicationController
  def show
    if alias = Alias.find_by_name(params[:name])
      render_component(:controller => alias.page_type.controller, 
                        :action => alias.page_type.action,
                        :navigation_node_id => alias.navigation_node.id)
    else
      render :file => "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/404.html", :status => :not_found
    end
  end
end