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POHow should I structure controller actions that share templates?
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copied!<p>Let's say I have a <code>User</code> model, and an <code>Invoice</code> model with a <code>belongs_to :user</code> association.</p> <p>Now I'm creating a <code>new</code> action for my <code>InvoicesController</code>, and the view that will be rendered. The view will have a select-element for selecting the user that this invoice will belong to.</p> <p>So I need to fetch those users somewhere; my instinct is to leave this kind of thing out of the view. I end up with this:</p> <pre><code>def new @users = User.all end </code></pre> <p>The form submit action is <code>create</code>. When the creation fails for some reason, I re-render the <code>new</code> action's view.</p> <pre><code>def create invoice = Invoice.new params[:invoice] if invoice.save flash[:notice] = 'Invoice created!' redirect_to :action => 'show', :id => invoice.id else @users = User.all render :action => 'new' end end </code></pre> <p>But as you can see, in order the re-render the <code>new</code> action, I have to fetch the users again.</p> <p>This is just an example, but consider that I have some forms with several select-elements filled from the database, or similar constructs. That turns into an awful lot of repetition.</p> <p>So how should I structure my controller in this situation?</p> <ul> <li>Should I simply use <code>User.all</code> from my view?</li> <li>Should I call <code>new</code> from within <code>create</code> to do the fetching for me?</li> <li>Or something else?</li> </ul>

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