Rails Best Practices

Bad Smell

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :comments

  def find_valid_comments
    self.comment.find(:all, :conditions => {:is_spam => false},
                            :limit => 10)
  end
end

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :post
end

class CommentsController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @comments = @post.find_valid_comments
  end
end

According to the decoupling principle, model should do finders by itself, a model should not know too much about associations finders logic. In here, Post model handle the complex finder of comments, but this is not its job, we should move valid comments finder to the Comment model.

Refactor

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :comments
end

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :post

  named_scope :only_valid, :conditions => { :is_spam => false }
  named_scope :limit, lambda { |size| { :limit => size } }
end

class CommentsController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @comments = @post.comments.only_valid.limit(10)
  end
end

We move the valid comments finder from Post model to Comment model, and make it as named_scope. So the Post and Comment models are loose coupled now and much easier to extend.