rails controller model view advice for ContacUs page - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

I have a simple static website written in rails 3.
The site has one controller called pages and each static page is served as view. Such as pages/home, pages/about, pages/prices, etc. This all works great.
I've now run into a problem where I need to add a simple contactus feature but I'm struggling to get my head round the model/controller/views for this.
I already have a pages controller with a contactus view, that view has details addresses etc. Now I somehow need to get a message model into the contactus view so I can populate the model attirbutes and send the email.
Can I / Should I just create a new message model from within the Pages Controller as in ,
class PagesController < ApplicationController
def contact
def new
#message = Message.new
end
def create
#message = Message.new(params[:message])
if #message.valid?
# TO DO send message here using OS mail program.
redirect_to root_url, notice: "Message sent! Thank you for contacting us."
else
render "new"
end
end
end
def about
end
def products
end
def portfolio
end
def services
end
end
Or should I take out the contactus view from the pages controller and make new controller called messages ?
Thanks.

Answer 1

I would have a separate controller called contact for example with new and create actions
def new
#message = Message.new
end
def create
#message = Message.new(params[:message])
if #message.valid?
NotificationsMailer.new_message(#message).deliver
redirect_to(root_path, :notice => "Message was successfully sent.")
else
flash.now.alert = "Please fill all fields."
render :new
end
end
end
Then a separate model to handle your messages
class Message
include ActiveModel::Validations
include ActiveModel::Conversion
extend ActiveModel::Naming
attr_accessor :name, :email, :subject, :body, :file
validates :name, :email, :subject, :body, :presence => true
validates :email, :format => { :with => %r{.+#.+\..+} }, :allow_blank => true
end
your attributes can be anything you like, obviously this is just an example of what you can do