Post request from external website to Rails App is not routed through - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am trying to send data from an external website to a Rails app but the post request is not routed through correctly.
The Rails app has the route
post '/submit_text/' => 'activities#submitText', as: :submitText
The code of the corresponding controller action is
before_filter :submitText
protect_from_forgery :except => :submitText
def submitText
puts "in submitText"
puts params[:text]
puts "end of submitText "
end
I am trying to send data from an external website to the Rails app like this
<form action="https://todo-list-study.herokuapp.com/submit_text/" method= "post">
<textarea name="response[text]" rows="25" cols="75" id="answer_text">
</textarea>
<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="test" onclick="recordAnswer()">
</form>
When I submit data from the external website, the Rails app receives it but it does not pass it on to the specified controller action. Here is what happens according to the Heroku log file:
heroku[router]: at=info method=POST path="/submit_text/" host=todo-list-study.herokuapp.com request_id=fee72511-ad1e-41c3-ae4c-d4b3395e6afd fwd="24.7.71.184" dyno=web.1 connect=1ms service=19ms status=500 bytes=1754 protocol=https
Unfortunately, that is all that happens. Given that the put statement at the beginning of the method is not executed I conclude that it is not being called. This happens even though both the Rails app and the external website run on the HTTPS protocol.
What can I do to fix this?

Answer 1

The router is finding an action for that call, otherwise it would have responded with a 404 instead of a 500, which indicates that there's an internal error.
Assuming that you're not trying to send back a response with content back to the client, try adding a call to render so that your controller sends back a response instead of trying to find a view template to render, which is where I'm guessing the issue is.
For example, try updating your code to:
def submitText
puts "in submitText"
puts params[:text]
puts "end of submitText "
render nothing: true
end