Differentiating between a dashboard layout and other view

Question

There is probably no right answer for this, but I would like to get input on what the best practices are.

I have a rails application built already. In the app, there is a dashboard view and a regular view. In the application.html.erb I will include the header and the footer for both views, but what is the best practice to differentiate between the 2 views?

The two ways I've been thinking about are:

1. Include a variable (is_dashboard_view) and check it.
2. Change the URL's to have a common pattern, like /dashboard/...

I am leaning towards option 1 since it seems to be a less of a hassle. Are there any other options and what would be the best practice.

Answer 1

Here you need to create a new layout dashboard.html.erb similar to application.html.erb. In this new layout you can use only those assets that you want to load for dashboard view and You can use a specific layout like this ....

class MyController < ApplicationController
  layout 'dashboard'
end

For rails layout per action you can use a method to set the layout.

class MyController < ApplicationController
  layout :resolve_layout

  # ...

  private

  def resolve_layout
    case action_name
    when "new", "create"
      "some_layout"
    when "index"
      "other_layout"
    else
      "application"
    end
  end
end