Here’s a neat trick.  It’s pretty simple but really helpful.

Problem: You’re always setting up the same stuff in every controller. Layouts, helper methods and so on.

Solution: Set up your own controller to inherit from.

Throw this into a new file in the controllers folder called base_controller.rb.

class BaseController < ApplicationController
 
  layout "base"
  helper :my_cool_helper  

end

Now take any controller and change the first line like below. Now anything in BaseController you get for free. So in the example below, PostsController’s layout will be “base” and will have the MyCoolHelper included also.

class PostsController < BaseController

  def list
  end

end

Wow, that was easy. Now it’s much easier to make (and change) default behaviors in your app. Hope this helps you, it sure helped me.