Rails Application Structure

I am working on a Rails application and am sort of new to MVC and REST. I am trying to use these methodologies but have a couple of questions:

1. I need to have navigation links that don't correspond directly to a "resource." Let's say they are "Dashboard" "Transactions" and "Balances." How do I model this in a controller? Do I just have a controller for "Navigation" that has three actions, one for each of the words above?
2. If this is a reasonable way to model the application, I figured I would make match routes that say /dashboard => Navigation#Dashboard, since I wouldn't want to expose the word "Navigation" in the URL. This seems good, but then in the server when I do a render 'dashboard' the URL says 'navigation/dashboard' instead of just 'dashboard' since I called it directly. The only work around I have found is to redirect to '/dashboard', but that seems wrong.

Thanks!

Edit: The real question is that when someone goes to "Sign In" and there is a validation error, I want to show the error, and render the sessions#new (which is the sign in page) view. This causes the browser to go to /sessions/new, but I want it to go to /signin. I want to avoid using a redirect_to since this will cause the the browser to do a whole second page request which doesn't seem "correct".

#r开发者_Go百科outes.rb  
match '/signin', :to => "sessions#new", :as => :signin

#sessions_controller.rb  

def create
    @title = "Sign In"
    user = User.authenticate(params[:session][:email], params[:session][:password])

    if user.nil?
        flash[:error] = "Invalid email/password combination."
        #I want to use render 'new', but that changes the URI in the browser to sessions/new, whereas I want to maintain /signin without redirecting

        redirect_to signin_path
    else
        sign_in user
        redirect_to dashboard_path
    end    
end

For the first part of the question, I often find myself in a position where there are "utility" functions of the site that don't map well onto resources. Typically, I stick them in some kind of utility controller. You might try DashboardController and define the methods navigation, balances, transactions and so on.

For the second part, did you try:

match '/dashboard' => 'navigation#dashboard'

This should work for what you describe. If you haven't already, you should read the Rails Guide on routing: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html.

It's fine to use a nav controller. In your routes you can define custom names for it.

#routes.rb

match "/dashboard" => "navigation#dashboard", :as => "dashboard"

You will get dashboard_path by defining the :as => "dashboard"

Update

You can't do render dashboard_path. You can do render 'dashboard' if you are in NavigationController, otherwise you have to specify the folder as well render 'navigation/dashboard'

You should in your views a folder called navigation with a template called dashboard.

In your NavigationController:

class NavigationController < ApplicationController
  def dashboard
    ...
  end
end

To use the link : <%= link_to 'Dashboard', dashboard_path %>

Update 2

I don't see the form that you created for sign_in. I assume that you are using devise. If that's the case then make sure that your login form posts to signin_path.

when I implement a dashboard, I use a DashboardController, and the index is just the dashboard. I usually also define a HomeController, where the homepage lives (home#index, and also the about page, the feedback page, ...).

1 - I'm not quit clear what you are asking. But if I get your question correctly, there should be 3 resources (controllers) for

1 - Dashboard

2 - Transactions

3 - Balances

and there controllers might have only show action

2- for that you can use named route (http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html) Ex: match 'Navigation' => 'Dashboard#show'

hope this helps