Rails: renaming a controller and corresponding model

Question

Is there an easy way to rename a controller and model in my app and all the instances in the corresponding code?

I'm using textmate, would this be as simple as using the replace function and replacing the word Post with Report?

Answer 1

You need to change the name of the Controller and the associated Model, Views, Helpers, Tests & Routes directories, file names, class names & the names in the class definitions.

I found two ways to do this but before you try anything I recommend you back-up your app, preferably with a Software Version Control system like Git & Github.com.

Your first option is to do it manually & there is a good explanation on how to do this here: How to rename rails controller and model in a project

Another way is to destroy your controller & model, and then generate a new one, this will remove all the files which were generated the first time round & replace them with new ones. Michael Hartl explains this solution well in his online guide to Ruby on Rails here: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/chapters/static-pages#sidebar-undoing_things

This is the solution I followed when I needed to make this change to my app, I needed to replace a MVC scaffold I generated called board with a new one called product.

1. First

I made a back-up of the work I did in the layout of the board view, app/views/boards/index.html.erb

2. Then

I ran the below rails commands in the terminal window.

$ rake db:rollback

$ rails destroy scaffold board name:string description:text image:string price:decimal

$ rails generate scaffold product product_type:string name:string description:text image:string price:decimal

$ rake db:migrate

3. Finally

I copied my backed-up boards/index.html.erb file into the newly generated app/views/products/index.html.erb & did a find & replace in my text editor on this file to replace board with product.

I think the second option is much more reliable & quicker but it’s important to make this change early on in your project before you make too many manual changes to the code. It would be better to just take a little more time planning your MVC names & database tables properly before you start your project.