RailsConf Writeups: Building and Working with Static Sites in Ruby on Rails

Ben Scofield, who I had not met, works with Patrick Reagan, who I have. Combined with the fact that almost every Rails site that I have written has some amount of static content, I was interested to see the talk.

In the style of Bob Martin’s talk early in the day, Ben’s presentation dealt with a progression of potential solutions to the problem of handling static material within Rails. The first solutions were very greasy! Check out this potential security hole:

def show
  page_path = params[:path].join('/')
  if File.exists?("#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/views/static/#{page_path}.rhtml")
    render :template => "static/#{page_path}"
  end
end

Obviously, that was from phase one. In the end, they end up with a solution of some elegance!

I don’t want to short-change Ben here, but I would like to give a better writeup when he comes to speak at CVREG in the coming months.