Widget Data Across Multiple Controllers

Question

Let's say that I have a widget that displays summary information about how many posts or comments that I have on a site.

What's the cleanest way to persist this information across controllers?

Including the instance variables in the application controller seems like a bad idea. Having a before filter that loads the data for each controller smells like code duplication.

Do I have to use a plugin like the Cells Plugin (http://cells.rubyforge.org/) or is there a simpler way of doing it?

Answer 1

Presumably, you have a single partial that displays this info. You can put the methods that fetch the data you need in ApplicationHelper or as class methods on whatever model(s) you're getting the data from. Then call that method in the partial when you need to display it.