conditional layouts

I don't know about you, but I always make a admin tool for all my rails projects. Being generally lazy I don't like making new controllers just for the admin, but I do make a different layout. How then to get the controller to display the right layout based on which layout the response came from?

I found the easiest way was to pass a

:layout => "admin"

parameter in the routes for each action I wanted to apply the admin layout to. That's what routes are for right?

Anyways, to make this magic happen it takes code in two separate spots.

* In the controller in question do:

layout :get_layout

* In the application.rb (controller) do:

private
  def get_layout
    if params[:layout]
      return params[:layout]
    else
      return "application"
    end
  end

In fact if you need this for all controllers just throw the

layout :get_layout

right in the application.rb too. I love inheritance! Don't you?

Now you have the ability to do conditional layouts to your hearts content!