Is this a case for inheritance?

I have Rails models User, ReadingList and SessionReadingList. A user has many reading lists. A SessionReadingList is a special type of reading list for before a user has registered, stored in the session.

In my ReadingListsController every action is of the form:

def show
  if current_user
    #load user's reading lists
  else
    #load session reading list from session
  end
end

I'm wondering whether I'd be better off subclassing ReadingListsController so I have e.g. SessionReadingListsController and UserReadingListsController. I don't know how I'd handle the routing then though.

So, is subclassing the solution? If so, do I redirect from the R开发者_运维知识库eadingListsController depending on current_user? Or is there a better way?

You can create a custom route matcher that uses the appropriate controller.

class LoggedInConstraint < Struct.new(:value)
  def matches?(request)
    request.cookies.key?("user_token") == value
  end
end

match 'reading-list' :to => "reading_list#index", :constraints => LoggedInConstraint.new(true)
match 'reading-list' :to => "session_reading_list#index", :constraints => LoggedInConstraint.new(true)