Be specific when defining your routes

Many controllers don’t need the full set of restful routes to be generated. We might have models in our codebase that aren’t user-deletable or are simple enough not need a full #show view.

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In those cases you don’t need to generate the routes or actions.

Instead of…

…generating all the routes:

config/routes.rb

resources :dogs do
  resources :meals
end

Use…

…only the routes you’re actually going to use.

config/routes.rb

resources :dogs, only: %w[create edit index new show update] do
  resources :meals, only: %w[create index]
end

Why?

There’s no value to maintaining, generating, and loading routes that do not link to actions in your controllers. I may result in errors creeping into your code and unexpected behaviour to live on in your application.

If a user can’t destroy a Thing in a ThingsController, don’t give them a route to try and do so.

Why not?

It might be faster at the point of creation to just leave all those superflouous routes around, but it feels like a poor decision for the maintainability of your app.

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