Rails Routing Incorrectly links to show.html - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm learning Rails and have encountered some behavior I don't understand. I'm trying to create a simple CRUD app. On the 'new' view after data entry fields and submit button I am trying to add a link that will go to another page (I'll call it 'fnord').
Instead of linking to fnord, it's going to show.html. Given that rails is convention based I wonder if this is a default behavior of some kind, but I haven't been able to figure out what triggers it or the proper way of routing to fnord.
This is Rails 3.2.21, Ruby 1.9.3. I originally generated the model, views and controller using scaffold and then started tweaking things.
Here's my controller (minus unrelated actions - index, destroy, etc):
class EmployeesController < ApplicationController
def show
#employee = Employee.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
format.html # show.html.erb
format.json { render json: #employee }
end
end
def new
#employee = Employee.new
respond_to do |format|
format.html # new.html.erb
format.json { render json: #employee }
end
end
def fnord
#nothing yet - just trying to get the page to appear right now
end
Here's the relevant code from new.html.erb:
<h2>New Employee</h2>
<%= render 'form' %>
<!-- content, data entry fields, submit button, etc -->
<div>
<%= link_to 'Fnord', employees_fnord_path %>
<div/>
Here's the view, fnord.hmtl.erb:
<h2>Fnord</h2>
<br/>
<p>this is fnord.html</p>
Here's my routes.rb:
MyApp::Application.routes.draw do
resources :employees
get 'employees/fnord'
root :to => 'employees#new'
end
I ran 'rake routes' and get the following output:
employees GET /employees(.:format) employees#index
POST /employees(.:format) employees#create
new_employee GET /employees/new(.:format) employees#new
edit_employee GET /employees/:id/edit(.:format) employees#edit
employee GET /employees/:id(.:format) employees#show
PUT /employees/:id(.:format) employees#update
DELETE /employees/:id(.:format) employees#destroy
employees_fnord GET /employees/fnord(.:format) employees#fnord
root / employees#new
As far as I can see this all looks right, but when I click on the link in new.html it returns show.html, not fnord.html.
The url that shows up in the browser is even locahost:3000/employees/fnord, but the content is from show.html.
I read the routing documentation (http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html) but didn't see any explanations.
I've tried restarting rails (many times) and clearing my browser cache as well and those steps didn't help.
Can anyone enlighten me as to what I'm missing? Thank you very much.

Answer 1

The route for /employees/fnord matches the show route because the show route is looking for URL's in the format: /employees/:id
When you go to /employees/fnord it interprets fnord as the ID of some employee, and it routes it to the show method.
One way to fix it is to declare the /employees/fnord route before the resources routes, so that it matches first:
MyApp::Application.routes.draw do
get 'employees/fnord'
resources :employees
root :to => 'employees#new'
end
Another way is to simply change the name of the URL so that it doesn't match the pattern of /employees/:id:
MyApp::Application.routes.draw do
resources :employees
get 'employees1/fnord', to: 'employees#fnord'
# or whatever
get 'foo', to: 'employees#fnord'
# etc...
get 'employees/foo/fnord', to: 'employees#fnord'
root :to => 'employees#new'
end