Ruby on Rails Routing with Comments - ruby-on-rails

I am trying to create a comment model for my posts and the question is how am I able to create comments but not have the routes nested inside of the posts...
That is, there is no route to posts/comment/:comment_id and instead just have the user enter a comment and let the user stay on the page without having to transfer the user. I want the user to have no interaction with a different route and just have them say where they are.

Not sure I understand correctly, but if you don't want the user to be taken to a new page after creating a comment just remove the "render" method in the action for the comment controller.

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Rails 4 new form defaults from params

I am using form_for in the _form.html.erb view in order to create my form for both the edit and new actions, as per a standard scaffold.
I have a model Owner which has_many pets.
I would like to put an html link on my views/owners/show.html.erb to create a new pet for said owner. This link will point to the new action of pets_controller.rb which when accessed will render the view in pets/new.html.erb
What I want to happen is for the the owner_id to be passed with the link in the url to the new action of pets_controller.rb and then be used as the default for a collection_select in pets/new.html.erb
So I have a link to create a new pet but because that link was on a specific owner page, I want the form to create a new pet to have that owner already set, so the user does not have to select from the list.
This has to be done without changing the behaviour of the edit action/view in pets.
I know that I can pass GET arguments then access them in the controller via params, then create variables in the action which are passed to the view. I can then manually check for a default and set it in the view. I do not need assistance in coding if this is the only solution.
Is there is a better way to do this? A format with which I can pass the params such that the view will just pick them up? Without manually editing my controllers and views?
While my personal inclination would be to do as you said and pass a parameter in the link helper and then access the params array in the pets view, you may find that this is the perfect opportunity to explore Nested Resources. Essentially, you could declare owners/:owner_id/pets/:pet_id route with:
resources :owners do
resources :pets
end
You could then link to this route, and reference :owner_id without having to append the query string to the URI (making somewhat cleaner for reuse).
This is likely more work for you, but also potentially more extensible (and certainly more inline with the Rails way of doing things).
REVISION
Added the following regarding link helpers to the comments, but wanted to reflect it in the answer as well.
To show a pet should be:
<%= link_to owner_pet_path( owner_variable, pet_variable) %>
To view pets' index index should be:
<%= link_to owner_pet_path( owner_variable ) %>
The answer given to this question is fantastic.
As #ConnorCMcKee suggests it would be wise to consider nesting your routes. However, if you are a beginner as myself I found that it helped my learning to simply nest my second controller into the first (i.e. nest PetsController into OwnersController) as a first step. Then afterwards I would continue with the routes.
The method would be something like:
1./ In owners/index.html.erb:
Links to PetsController index action
The key to make this work is to send the :owner_id in your link parameters. Then that Pets index action will have access to that :owner_id and know which :owner_id called it.
2./ In PetsController you would then be able to find that Owner using that id, like so:
params[:owner_id]
Then your actions can start to take advantage of knowing what Owner called them. Remember though that all your redirects inside your PetsController need to preserve params[:owner_id]. That is because once you are inside that nested structure you have to maintain it and stay inside it and always know which :owner_id you are working with.

Create new page in Rails to add roles to existing users

I want to create a new page in my rails app that you can access once you're logged in. All you would see is a dropdown with the existing users and a dropdown with the role you want to assign to that user with a submit button that would add the role to the user_role column for that user. Do I do this with a
rails g controller add_roles new create
or
rails g scaffold add_roles
How do I get it to submit the correct info to the user table?
From my understanding, a rails scaffold is a full set of controller, model, and migration. In your case, I don't think you want a add_roles_controller, and an add_roles model, you just want to update a column of your existing Users DB correct?
If so, ask yourself if you really need a controller to do this, this type of functionality can be done in an existing user_controller (or something of the like). If you are going the CRUD route, you can consider this an update upon a user.
You can make an active record call from any controller, lets say you're in a user_controller and you have a users model, you could do something like:
#users = Users.all
That would return an object of all the user's stored in the db from which can can loop through them, picking out each individuals role attribute.
If you need help on creating a form, you're going to need to elaborate, this will require changing your routes to respond to a POST to a certain controller action. That controller action can then take the parameters of the post, say a user's role, and update the Users database accordingly
if you haven't yet, check out the gem devise - it's a very easy way to login/logout and it includes some pretty awesome session management
Devise
And if you want more functionality, I'd look into rolify. I haven't used it but it seems like a great way to add roles to users. Rolify

Handling forms in rails

I am a little confused with forms in RoR.
I have a contacts page with a corresponding method in my controller. What I am trying to do is have a form so people can leave a message. I will then be emailing that message to myself.
I have the form and everything created. However, I am a little confused on how I would actually get the data from the form once they hit the submit button. would it just be accessible through my contacts method in my controller using params[:message]?
Also, what if I had multiple forms on one page? Would I just be doing params[:message1], params[:message2], etc., in the contacts method in my controller?
Take a look at this answer for details on what exactly the params hash is. When you reference params[:message], this implies that you are POST'ing to your controller action with, say, "message[subject]=abc123", which Rails helpfully turns into a hash with a key like: params[:message]['subject'].
If you're looking to send an email, check out mail_form, which simplifies creating a non-database-backed model that get's turned into an email.
Lastly, about having multiple forms on a page: each form POST's to its action and includes all of the form elements that are children of that form in the DOM. So, only the children of that message will actually be included in the params[:message] hash. You can use fields_for to have multiple models within a single form.

Ruby on Rails - Adding a second (extremely) simple Auth layer in app

Once a user logs into their account, they are presented with a list of 'Employees'.
As of right now, when you click an employee, it takes the user to the 'show' page of that specific employee, however I want to add a 'pin-protected' aspect to that list before it renders the show page.
I want to add a simple layer of authentication that would go like this:
When a user clicks their name on a list, a text-field appears that asks for the selected employee's pin.
The user types in the pin. On submit, it compares the inputted pin against the 'pin' column for that employees' record. If it's correct it grants access to the selected employee's show page.
Is this something that is easily done in RoR? This is the first real app I have worked on, so I am having trouble wrapping my mind around a couple concepts like these.
Thanks so much!
Take a look at devise, it's most definitely your best bet for Ruby on Rails 3 authentication layer.
You're best bet if you just want to add a little functionality to your existing model class would be to add a method along the lines of:
def validate_pin(pin_to_check)
self.pin == pin_to_check
end
And then you just need to modify your employee controller so that show method checks to see if the pin has been provided (ideally via a session variable), otherwise redirect and request the pin with an additional method and route Employee#request_pin in the controller which asks the user to enter the pin, on success redirecting to the Employee#show route.
Session handling in the controller
To write the session variable, you'd need an Employee#check_pin method (as a POST route) and you'd just use the code:
session[:pin_valid] = true
Then you'd check session[:pin_valid] in your Employee#show method

Why does Rails use plurals for new and create?

I understand why a Rails index method would use the plural form of a resource - we're showing all projects, for example.
And I understand why the show method would use the singular form - we only want to see one project, with a particular ID.
But I don't understand why new and create would use the plural. Is there a way to create more than one project at a time? Is there some other reasoning for using the plural here that someone could explain?
New and Create aren't plural, in the way I think about REST. Instead, I think about it like:
whatever.com is your base domain, and whatever.com/books means that you have a collection of resources each named book. The collection itself is named books.
So, when you want to create a new book, you are asking the collection for the information needed to create a new book. This becomes /books/new
When you actually create the book, you are posting information to /books. The HTTP verb is POST, so when you POST to your collection, you execute the create action.
This looks like a good starting point on REST.
I thought they were always plural. Scroll down a bit on this page for an example of the routes generated by resources :photos
Whether you're GETting a single resource or POSTing to the collection, you're still in the domain of photos. So, search the domain of photos given an id, POST a new photo to the domain of photos, etc.

Resources