all, I'm trying to get a custom action to work with a put method: in the
in _post.html.erb i have a link_to statement:
<%= link_to 'End now', post, :method => :put, :action => endnow %>
routes.rb contains:
resources :posts do
member do
put :endnow
end
and posts_controller.rb looks like:
class PostsController < ApplicationController
helper_method :endnow
[.. code for create, edit, destroy, etc ..]
def endnow
puts params
end
end
rake routes's relevant line looks like:
endnow_post PUT /posts/:id/endnow(.:format) posts#endnow
However, the action endnow helper doesn't run when clicking on this link.
Strangely, it does run with an index action (which i can tell from the puts command.
Of course, eventually the code for endnow will update #post, but for now, it just doesn't run properly.
Maybe i'm going about this the wrong way - all I'm trying to achieve is to update #post upon clicking the link to that post, and before showing it.
Any ideas / Alternatives?
Why not use the route helper method provided to you? Change your link to
<%= link_to 'End now', endnow_post_path(#post), method: :put %>
Things you're doing wrong:
If you want to specify the :action, use the Symbol for the action (you're missing a colon). :action => endnow should be action: :endnow
I will assume you have a #post instance variable you're passing from your controller to your action. You should be using that instead of post (unless you do in fact have a local post variable you're omitting from your code)
You are using endnow as an action; you should remove the helper_method :endnow line in your controller because it's not something you want to/should be accessing from your view.
This can all be avoided by using the route helper (for endnow_post you'd append _path to get the local route path: endnow_post_path), and pass in your #post as an argument.
Because you're trying to do a PUT request, you must make sure you have something like jquery-ujs included in your asset pipeline to convert these links to form submissions behind the scenes; browsers don't support PUT via the click of a link on their own.
As for why you're getting the template error when you get your link_to working, Rails is telling you that you need to create a app/views/posts/endnow.html.erb file. Your action has only puts params which does not terminate execution, leaving Rails to assume you still are trying to render some endnow.html.erb template.
Are there other ways to do what you're trying to do (change a single attribute of a specific model)? Sure. Are there better ways? That's pretty subjective; it may not be the most RESTful way, but it's arguably easier to deal with (if for example there are very specific authorization rules to check before updating the attribute you are modifying in endnow. Does the way you've started fleshing out work? Absolutely.
Finally, as a bump in the right direction, after you fix your link_to and remove the the helper_method as I have described above, your endnow action might look like this:
def endnow
post = Post.find!(params[:id])
post.some_attribute_here = some_new_value_here
post.save
redirect_to :root and return # <- this line sets a redirect back to your homepage and terminates execution, telling rails to do the redirect and **not** to render some endnow.html.erb file
end
Related
I have a counter in my model that I want to give the user the ability to
reset it, I'm wondering what's the best way to achieve this. I can think of
two ways:
By a custom controller action.
Simple and easy but I can't decide which HTTP verb to use. I can make the
case that it should be a GET because the user clicks a link that reset
the counter and the result are always the same, i.e. counter
becomes 0. But it could also be a POST/PATCH since we are modifying
something on the server but POST/PATCH requires a form which leads to
the other way.
By a link that submits an edit form with the counter reset to 0 without
the user seeing the form.
I like this solution because it can be done with RESTful controller
methods. But I have no idea how to do that with Rails, or even if it's
possible.
So which is "Rails Way" to do this? and how do I do it?
Rather than creating a custom action, another approach is to create a well-named controller and stick to the RESTful controller method names.
config/routes.rb
resource :counter_reset, only: [:create]
app/controllers/counter_reset_controller.rb
class CounterResetController < ApplicationController
def create
# reset your counter
end
end
Then POST to counter_reset_path in your view
Personally, I would use button_to — this generates a single button that submits to the URL; it performs a POST operation by default. If you don't like the button style, you can switch to using link_to; however, keep in mind that if a user has JavaScript disabled, the request will fallback to using GET.
<%= button_to "Reset counter!", counter_reset_path %>
<%= link_to "Reset counter!", counter_reset_path, method: :post %>
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHelper.html#method-i-button_to
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHelper.html#method-i-link_to
Update:
If you prefer not to create a new controller, you can create a new route that maps to a custom action in your existing controller:
config/routes.rb
resources :counters do
post :reset, to: "counters#reset"
end
app/controllers/counters_controller.rb
class CountersController < ApplicationController
def reset
# reset your counter
end
end
In your view:
<%= button_to "Reset counter!", counter_reset_path %>
Actually you don't need a form, for me i would add a new action, it would look something like this ( of course depends on how your current routing looks like )
/user/:id/counter/reset # with action = post
And the link is very simple, you just create a link_to and add a method: :post which will add a data-method: :post in the html, the rest will be handled by the unobtrusive js.
The reason I don't recommend the form method, is users might use it to update different attributes that you might not want to update, or at least even change the counter to whatever number they want, I prefer the specific number to be defined in the controller not the view/form.
i'v been trying to resolve this error for the past 5 hours and I'm gonna burn my computer if I can't solve this.
undefined method `pushes_path' for #<#:0x007f859d605250> this is the error code I'm getting but i don't understand why.
this is my index.html.erb file inside of the interaction
<%= simple_form_for #push do |f| %>
<%= f.input :payload, as: :text %>
<%= f.input :segment, as: :radio_buttons %>
<%= submit_tag "start the campaign" %>
<% end %>
and this is my interaction controller
class InteractionController < ApplicationController
def index
#push =Push.new
end
end
Push is my table in the database and i'll get the inputs and write them in the database to use them for later one.
and this is my routes file
devise_for :partners
get 'home/index'
get 'segmentation/index'
get 'interaction/index'
root to: "home#index"
i really don't know why its looking for pushes_path, what am i doing wrong?
form_for
The problem you have is that your form_for method is going to try and generate a route based off your #path object. And as such, if you don't have a path created for it, you'll receive the error you're getting:
:url- The URL the form is to be submitted to. This may be represented
in the same way as values passed to url_for or link_to. So for example
you may use a named route directly. When the model is represented by a
string or symbol, as in the example above, if the :url option is not
specified, by default the form will be sent back to the current url
(We will describe below an alternative resource-oriented usage of
form_for in which the URL does not need to be specified explicitly).
The bottom line is that as Rails is object orientated, its built around the assumption that you'll have routes set up to handle the creation of individual objects.
Every time you use form_for, Rails will attempt to construct your routes from your object -- so if you're trying to do the following, it will treat the routes as photo_path etc:
#app/views/pushes/new.html.erb
<%= form_for #push do |f| %>
...
<% end %>
--
Fixes
As #mandeep suggested, there are several fixes you can employ to get this to work:
Firstly, you can just create a route for your push objects:
#config/routes.rb
resources :pushes
Secondly, as you're using a different controller, you'll want to do the following:
#config/routes.rb
resources :interactions
#app/views/pushes/new.html.erb
<%= form_for #push, url: interaction_path do |f| %>
...
<% end %>
This will route your form submission to the interactions controller, rather than the pushes controller that you'll get by default!
Objects
Something to consider when creating Rails-based backends is the object-orientated nature of the framework.
By virtue of being built on Ruby, Rails is centered on objects - a term for a variable, which basically encompasses much more than just a piece of data. Objects, in the case of Rails, are designed to give the application:
Once you understand this, the entire spectrum of Rails functionality becomes apparent. The trick is to realize that everything you do in Rails should be tied to an object. This goes for the controllers too:
--
Ever wondered why you call resources directive in your routes, for a controller? It's because you're creating a set of resourceful routes based for it:
Do you see how it's all object orientated?
This gives you the ability to define the routes for specific controllers etc. The most important thing to note is how this will give you the ability to determine which routes / controller actions your requests should go
--
There's nothing wrong in using the controller setup as you have - the most important thing is to ensure you're able to define the custom URL argument, as to accommodate the non-object based structure
In your index action you have
def index
#push =Push.new
end
and your form has
<%= simple_form_for #push do |f| %>
so your form is looking for /pushes with post verb or pushes_path and you don't have that route in your routes.rb file so to fix this you need to add this in routes.rb:
resources :pushes
Update:
when you add resources :push rails basically creates seven different routes for you. One of which is
POST /pushes pushes#create create a new push
and if you look at the html generated by your form it would be something like:
<form action="/pushes" class="new_push" id="new_push" method="post">
// your fields
</form>
notice the action and verb so when you submit your form your routes are checked for them and since you didn't define them in your routes you were getting this error
And how will i be able to use the params i m getting from this form with this new resource addition?
Your form will take you to pushes_controller create action so first of all you'll have to define them. You can access them simply by params[:pushes] in your controller action but since you want to create a new record so you'll have to permit those attributes, checkout strong parameters
If you are using rails >= 4 then you can do
class PushesController < ApplicationController
def create
#push =Push.new(push_params)
if #push.save
redirect_to #push
else
render 'interaction/index'
end
end
private
def push_params
params.require(:push).permit(:attributes)
end
end
If you are using rails < 4 then instead of permitting these attributes(because strong parameters feature came from rails 4) you'll have to tell rails that these attributes are accessible by writing this in your pushes.rb
attr_accessible :attribute_name
Why it is assuming that its pushes controller?Because of the Push.new creation?
That's because if you look at your index action #push = Push.new so #push contains a push object with nil values(as you have just initialized it) so this is where rails magic comes, rails automatically tries to figure out url of your form and since your #push is only an initialized variable so rails takes you to create action for it. For details you should checkout rails polymorphic urls If you want your form to go to interaction_controller or some other url then you'll have to specify the url option for it
<%= form_for #push, url: "your_url_for_custom_method" %>
// other fields
<% end %>
And in the end you should really read docs
I want to make a ruby function called within rails. I followed this question, but I get redirected to
http://localhost:3000/my_func?arg=arg
which I don't want. I only want to execute the function when the button is clicked, but remain on the same page!
EDIT:
I modified the code, or better yet, made a scratch site just to solve this. I only did:
rails new eraseme
cd eraseme
rails g controller public home
app/controllers/public/home.html.erb
class PublicController < ApplicationController
def home
end
def my_func
end
end
app/views/public/home.html.erb
<%= button_to "Button", {:action => "my_func", :arg => "arg"} %>
What I want to do, is execute my_func when I click the button. But when I click, I get
No route matches {:action=>"my_func", :arg=>"arg", :controller=>"public"}
So, from what I can tell. I think you want to make a button that will send an AJAX/HTTP request to the Controller in order to call a function, that won't return a HTML file at completion.
In order to accomplish this, you must do the following.
1.) Set the HTTP routing for this call, this is within the config/routes.rb file.
match '/public/my_func' => 'public#my_func'
This allows your application to direct any HTTP requests with the following URL to call your method within the controller. Your button_to method will send this call with that URL due to the :action => "my_func" param.
2.) Also include the :remote => true, :form => { "data-type" => "json" } as more parameters to the button_to method.
This will transform the button from a traditonal HTTP request to an HTTP Request via AJAX request.
Let me know how this works, I think there are alternatives to using AJAX in this case, if its a very simple method then you can perhaps include it within the view as erb.
I know this is a trivial question. But I have search all over google but cannot find a simple answer to this question.
Basically I have a line that says <%= link_to 'Run it', :method => 'doIt' %> in the view, then in the corresponding controller, I have the doIt method as follows:
def doIt
puts "Just do it"
end
I just want to check that if i click on Run it, it will output the string "Just do it". I ran this on localhost and there is no errors, but I can't find the output "Just do it" anywhere. It is not displayed in the rails console or rails server log. I just want to know where does puts output the string to , where to find it ?
Round 2: So this is what I tried ....
Added this line in the index.html.erb (which is the root)
<%= link_to 'Run it', :method => 'do_it' %>
and in the url, it is just basically http://localhost:3000/ (since i route controller#index as root)
The display is just an underlined 'Run it' that links to 'do_it' method in the controller.
In the controller, i include this method
def do_it
logger.debug "Just do it"
end
when i click on 'Run it', the url change to http://localhost:3000/gollum_starters?method=do_it and in the development.log, the following is written into it:
Started GET "/gollum_starters?method=do_it" for 127.0.0.1 at 2011-08-25 15:27:49 -0700
Processing by GollumStartersController#index as HTML
Parameters: {"method"=>"do_it"}
[1m[35mGollumStarter Load (0.3ms)[0m SELECT "gollum_starters".* FROM "gollum_starters"
Rendered gollum_starters/index.html.erb within layouts/application (3.6ms)
Completed 200 OK in 16ms (Views: 7.7ms | ActiveRecord: 0.3ms)
Additionally, i tried all the logger.error/info/fatal/etc ... and Rails.logger.error/info/fatal/etc, all did not print out the line "Just do it" in the development log
#Paul: I did not touch the environment folder or file, i assume by default when a new rails app is created, it is in development ?
#Maz: Yes you are right, I am just trying to test if the do_it method is getting called. To do that, I just want to print something out in the controller. Can't think of any way simpler that just print a string out, but this problem is making me miserable. I am just using textmate, no IDE.
Round 3:
#Paul thx alot, but i encountered error
My routes files is now:
resources :gollum_starters
root :to => "gollum_starters#index"
match 'gollum_starters/do_it' => 'gollum_starters#do_it', :as => 'do_it'
My index.html.erb is now:
<%= link_to "Do it", do_it_path %>
My gollum_starters_controller.rb
def do_it
logger.debug 'Just do it'
end
I am getting this error:
Couldn't find GollumStarter with ID=do_it
the error is in here, 2nd line:
def show
#gollum_starter = GollumStarter.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
format.html # show.html.erb
format.xml { render :xml => #gollum_starter }
end
end
I wonder why does it route to show ? When i click do_it, it actually goes to localhost:3000/gollum_starters/do_it which is correct, but apparently the error points to the show method ?
Round 4:
#Paul, i shifted resources :gollum_starters down:
root :to => "gollum_starters#index"
match 'gollum_starters/do_it' => 'gollum_starters#do_it', :as => 'do_it'
resources :gollum_starters
but got this error (omg i wanna kill myself),
Template is missing
Missing template gollum_starters/do_it with {:handlers=>[:erb, :rjs,
:builder, :rhtml, :rxml], :formats=>[:html], :locale=>[:en, :en]} in
view paths "~/project_name/app/views"
:/
---------- Answer to Round 4 ------------
Basically as the error explains, there is no template(i.e a webpage) to show hence error thrown. The solution is to add a redirect_to , in this case I redirect to root_url.
def do_it
logger.debug 'Just do it'
redirect_to(root_url)
end
Everything works now, "Just do it" finally outputs to development.log and the rails server console.
Thank you Maz and Paul and Andrew for helping me out. Learn a lot.
That link_to does not do what you think it does the value for :method is referring to the HTTP verbs.
Taken from the docs for ActionView::Helpers::UrlHelper
:method - Symbol of HTTP verb. Supported verbs are :post, :get, :delete and :put. By default it will be :post.
You would need to define a route in your routes.rb file that uses your method
# The order of routes is important as the first matched will be used
# therefore the match needs to be above 'resources :controller'
match 'controller/do_it' => 'controller#do_it', :as => 'do_it'
resources :gollum_starters # <--- This needs to be below the match or this will catch first
The controller/do_it is the route to be matched
The controller#do_it is the controller followed by the action to be used (separated by #)
The value for :as creates the path do_it_path that can be used in your link_to
Your link_to may look something like
<%= link_to "Do it", do_it_path %>
And to complete the lifecycle of a request you will need to add a view to be rendered
app/views/gollum_startes/do_it.html.erb # <-- Add file
Summary
Doing all of this creates a bit of a mess just to print something out to the logs, but it should help you understand the whole lifecycle a bit better now. Plus this answers serves as a document to help you rewind this mess.
You are not understanding what "method" means in the context of a link.
The "method" here refers to the request method, which means the kind of request you are asking the browser to make. From the perspective of a RESTful application like Rails there are four relevant request types: GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. These request types affect how the controller responds to a request.
GET => INDEX or SHOW
POST => CREATE
PUT => UPDATE
DELETE => DESTROY
There are two other "standard" rails actions, NEW and EDIT. These are GET requests to present an interface to the user. NEW gives you a form to POST (CREATE) a new object, and EDIT gives you a form to PUT (UPDATE) and existing one.
See the rails guide for more on how HTTP Verbs relate to CRUD operations.
The important, basic thing to understand is that links, by default, are GET requests, and forms, by default, are POST requests.
So, when your link looks like this:
<%= link_to 'Run it', :method => 'do_it' %>
...it is bogus. There is no such HTTP method as "do_it", so you're not triggering anything. Because there is no such method, Rails actually passes this on as a parameter of the URL. Hence if you click that you should see your url bar now says ?method=do_it at the end.
There are several problems with what you're trying to do. First of all, the link_to helper expects at least two arguments: 1, the text for the link, and 2 the HREF for the link. So, you really need to use:
link_to 'Run it', url
Second, you need to know what URL to pass to get your controller action.
Please be familiar with the following rails convention: When referring to a controller action you can abbreviate it using the form: controller_name#controller_action. e.g. pages#show or articles#index.
Assuming your controller is called ExamplesController, you can manually trigger the seven standard controller actions as follows:
link_to 'examples#index', '/examples'
link_to 'examples#show', '/examples/123' # 123 is the id of a specific example
link_to 'examples#new', '/examples/new'
link_to 'examples#create', '/examples', :method => :post
link_to 'examples#edit', '/examples/123/edit'
link_to 'examples#update', '/examples/123', :method => :put
link_to 'examples#destroy', '/examples/123', :method => :delete
Note that in the above, INDEX, SHOW, NEW, and EDIT are all GET requests. You could specify :method => :get but that is unnecessary
To abstract this away and take care of assigning the ID when required Rails provides path helpers.
So, to repeat the above using the path helpers you could use:
link_to 'examples#index', examples_path
link_to 'examples#show', example_path( #example )
link_to 'examples#new', new_example_path
link_to 'examples#create', examples_path, :method => :post
link_to 'examples#edit', edit_example_path( #example )
link_to 'examples#update', example_path( #example ), :method => :put
link_to 'examples#destroy', example_path( #example ), :method => :delete
Now, you get these path helpers from the router, and they are defined in your routes.rb file. Within that file if you define:
resources :examples
...then you will get all the path_helpers above.
If you are using a normal RESTful controller and you want to add a custom action, then you need to make one decision: does the action operate on the entire set of objects handled by that controller (like index) or just a single specific one (like show). The reason this is important is this tells the router whether the new action you're defining needs to receive a record ID as part of the request.
If you want to act on the entire collection of objects, you define:
resources :examples do
collection do
get 'do_it'
end
end
If you want to act on just a single member of the collection you define:
resources :examples do
member do
get 'do_it'
end
end
Where I wrote 'get' in the examples above you can use any of the four verbs -- GET is normally what you do if you want to show a page, and POST is normally what I'd use if you're submitting a form. You can also write this shorthand like so:
resources :examples do
get 'do_it', :on => :collection
post 'something', :on => :member
end
For more on defining custom controller actions, see the rails guide.
Now that you've defined a route, you should run rake routes in terminal to see the name of the new path helper. Let's assume you added do_it as a collection method, your path helper would be: do_it_examples_path.
Now then, back to your link, if you put:
<%= link_to 'Do it.', do_it_examples_path %>
... then you would trigger the do_it action. When the action is triggered your puts should normally render to the server log (assuming you're running rails s in a terminal window you should see it right after started GET on examples#do_it...).
Now, in the browser you would get a missing template error as a GET request is going to expect to render a view, but that's a subject for another question. Basically, now you should understand what the controller actions are, how you get to them. If you want to learn more about what to do with your controller action, see the guide :)
I hope you understand what's going on now. Feel free to ask questions.
You want to use the Rails logging mechanism:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/debugging_rails_applications.html#sending-messages
This means that even if you don't launch the server using rails s the output will still go to the right place.
As my understanding on nested resources, on edge Rails, should not
link_to 'User posts', #user.posts
point to
/users/:id/posts
?
The routes.rb file contains
map.resources :users, :has_many => :posts
If this is not the default behavior, can it be accomplished doing something else?
Along the same lines as Rishav:
link_to "User Posts", [#user, :posts]
Here's an explanation from my blog.
Really early on in Rails, you would write routes like this:
redirect_to :controller => "posts", :action => "show", :id => #post.id
What this would do is dutifully redirect to the show action inside the PostsController and pass along the id parameter with a
value of whatever #post.id returns. Typical 302 response.
Then Rails 1.2 came along and allowed you to use routing helpers, like this:
redirect_to post_path(#post)
And the people rejoiced.
This would do effectively the same thing. post_path here would build a route using the #post object that would look something
like /posts/1 and then redirect_to would send back a 302 response to that route and the browser would follow it.
Then later versions (I can't remember which one), allowed syntax like this:
redirect_to #post
And the people rejoiced a second time.
Magic, but not really
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
While this seems like magic, it's not. What this is doing is actually very, very neat. The redirect_to method, much like its cousins link_to and form_for all use a common method to build URLs, called url_for. The url_for method takes many different
varieties of objects, such as strings, hashes or even instances of models, like in the example above.
What it does with these objects then, is quite neat. In the case of the redirect_to #post call above, it inspects the #post
object, sees that it is an object of the Post class (we assume, anyway) and checks to see if that object has been persisted in a
database somewhere by calling persisted? on it.
By "persisted", I mean that a Ruby object has a matching record in the database somewhere. The persisted? method in Active Record is implemented like this:
def persisted?
!(new_record? || destroyed?)
end
If the object wasn't created through a call such as Model.new then it won't be a new record, and if it hasn't had the destroy method called on it won't be
destroyed either. If both of these cases are true, then that makes the object has most likely been persisted to the database in the form of a record.
If it has been persisted, then url_for knows that this object can be found
somewhere, and that the place it can be found is most likely under a method called post_path. So it calls this method, and passes
in the to_param value of this object which is usually the id.
In short, it's effectively doing this:
#{#post.class.downcase}_path(#post.to_param)
Which comes out to being this:
post_path(1)
And when that method is called you would get this little string:
"/posts/1"
Lovely!
This is called polymorphic routing. You can pass an object to methods like redirect_to, link_to and form_for and it will
attempt to work out the correct URL of what to use.
The form of form_for
Now, when you're coding Rails you may have used form_for like this a very long time ago:
<% form_for #post, :url => { :controller => "posts", :action => "create" } do |f| %>
Of course, with advancements in Rails you could simplify it to this:
<% form_for #post, :url => posts_path do |f| %>
Because the form is going to default to having a POST HTTP method and therefore a request to posts_path is going to go to the
create action of PostsController, rather than the index action, which is what would result if it were a GET request.
But why stop there? Why not just write this?
<%= form_for #post do |f| %>
Personally, I see no reason not to... if it's something as simple as this. The form_for method uses url_for underneath, just like
redirect_to to work out where the form should go. It knows that the #post object is of the Post class (again, we assume) and it
checks to see if the object is persisted. If it is, then it will use post_path(#post). If it's not, then posts_path.
The form_for method itself checks to see if the object passed in is persisted also, and if it is then it'll default to a PUT HTTP
method, otherwise a POST.
So this is how form_for can be flexible enough to have an identical syntax on both a new and edit view. It's becoming more and
more common these days for people to even put their whole form_for tags into a single partial and include it in both the new and
edit pages.
A more complex form
So form_for is fairly simple for when you pass a normal object, but what happens if you pass an array of objects? Like this, for
instance:
<%= form_for [#post, #comment] do |f| %>
Well, both url_for and form_for have you covered there too.
The url_for method detects that this is an array and separates out each part and inspects them individually. First, what is this
#post thing? Well, in this case let's assume it's a Post instance that is persisted and has the id of 1. Second, what is this
#comment object? It's a Comment instance that has not yet been persisted to the database.
What url_for will do here is build up the URL helper method piece by piece by placing each part in an array, joining it into a routing method and then calling that routing method with the necessary arguments.
First, it knows that the #post object is of the Post class and is persisted, therefore the URL helper will begin with post. Second, it knows that the #comment object is of the Comment class and is not persisted, and therefore comments will follow post in the URL helper build. The parts that url_for now knows about are [:post, :comments].
The url_for method combines these individual parts with an underscore, so that it becomes post_comments and then appends _path
to the end of that, resulting in post_comments_path. Then it passes in just the persisted objects to the call to that method, resulting in a call like this:
post_comments_path(#post)
Calling that method results in this:
"/posts/1/comments"
Best part? form_for will still know to use POST if the #comment object is not a persisted object, and PUT if it is. A good
thing to remember is that the form_for is always for the last object specified in the array. The objects prior to it are just its
nesting, nothing more.
The more objects that are added, the more times url_for will do the hard yards and build the path out... although I recommend that
you keep it to just two parts.
A symbolic form
Now that we've covered using an array containing objects for form_for, let's take a look at another common use. An array containing
at least one Symbol object, like this:
<%= form_for [:admin, #post, #comment] do |f| %>
What the url_for method does here is very simple. It sees that there's a Symbol and takes it as it is. The first part of the
url will simply be the same as the symbol: admin. The URL that url_for knows of at this point is just [:admin].
Then url_for goes through the remaining parts of the array. In this case, let's assume both #post and #comment are persisted
and that they have the ids of 1 and 2 respectively. Same classes as before. url_for then adds post to the URL that it's building,
and comment too, resulting in [:admin, :post, :comment].
Then the joining happens, resulting in a method of admin_post_comment_path, and because both #post and #comment are persisted here,
they're passed in, resulting in this method call:
admin_post_comment_path(#post, #comment)
Which (usually) turns into this path:
/admin/posts/1/comments/2
You can use the array form of polymorphic routing with the redirect_to, link_to and form_for methods. There's probably other
methods that I'm not remembering right now that can do it too... it's generally anything in Rails that would normally take a URL.
There's no need to build your URLs in any Rails version greater-than 2 using hashes; that's pretty old school.
Instead, experiment with your new knowledge of polymorphic routing and use it to the best of your advantage.
This should work:
link_to "User Posts", user_posts_path(#user)
for more details visit:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html
link_to uses url_for which uses polymorphic_url.
polymorphic_url:
builds the helper method, using the class name of active record objects
calls the helper with the active record objects as arguments
Therefore, as others said, you should use:
link_to 'User Posts', [#user, :posts]
for which the path is:
user_posts_path(#user)
^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^
1 2 3
class of #user because it is an active record
convert to string because symbol
add as call argument because active record
That builds the good helper method.
This is how to link to a nested resource in the latest Rails:
link_to 'Destroy Comment', post_comment_path(comment.post, comment)
Note: This is in a partial so there isn't a #.