Overriding named routes provided by Rails 3 Engines

Question

I am working on a Ruby on Rails 3(.0) application that uses a Rails engine. However, in my local application, I want to override one of the routes provided by the Rails engine.

From the engine config/routes.rb:

match 'their_named_route' => 'controller#action', :as => 'the_route'

From my application config/routes.rb:

match 'my_named_route' => 'controller#action', :as => 'the_route'

However, when I inspect the routes, both seem to be active (and their route appears to "win", at least within the engine controllers)

$ rake routes
the_route  /my_named_route(.:format)    {:controller=>"controller", :action=>"action"}
the_route  /their_named_route(.:format) {:controller=>"controller", :action=>"action"}

Is there a good way to force my local application's named route to take priority?

Answer 1

I'm afraid that there's no such easy way. The routes are defined in lib/action_dispatch/routing/mapper.rb:271, which calls add_route on the RouteSet (defined in rack-mount-0.6.14/lib/rack/mount/route_set.rb, and on line 71 the name is attached). There's no remove_route method, and the Engine's route is added last. You can add your route manually after the application is initialized with Rails.application.routes.draw instead of having it in routes.rb, or you can patch the Engine.