resources :books do
resources :chapters
end
Let's assume I have the above properly nested resources. I want to create a page where I create parent book resources and another page to create the chapters resources. When creating chapters, I want users to be able to select parent books they created.
Right now I have...
protected
def find_book
#book = Book.find(params[:book_id])
end
...in the chapter controller but I believe this only works when there is already a book id present in the URL. So to create a new chapter I would have to visit "rootpath/book/book_id/chapter/new" when I want to be able to create chapters on a separate page.
Although I'm really not sure how to approach the problem, right now my plan is to put an association(?) form on the chapter creation page that links the nested resources.
The problem is, I'm really new to web development and I'm not sure if I'm approaching this right at all. How would I put a form that sends :book_id to the chapter controller? Would this method work at all? Are there more efficient ways to go at it?
I realize my questions might be a little vague but Any help would be greatly appreciated!
The dull answer is: your proposal does not make sense with only the nested route.
The nested route implies that upon accessing the chapters#new action, you already know exactly which book that should contain the chapter.
But on the bright side: you can use both nested and non-nested routes at the same time.
If you want to keep the nested route, but also provide a new and create actions that lets the user choose the desired Book for the chapter, you can add a non-nested route for Chapter creation.
For example:
resources :books do
resources :chapters
end
resources :chapters
Note that your controllers may need to be rewritten a bit to accomodate the dual routes.
If you want, you could create both resources in the same page. Look up accepts_nested_attributes_for to do that. It's really easy, once you get the hang of it.
Related
What is the standard practice for a rails app when a standard 'show.html.erb' for one model essentially just lists its has_many of another model? There is no index for the 'child' model as without the context of its 'parent' model, a list of them would be useless.
Creating /parents/1/children/1 feels like the right thing to do (especially in terms of the API) and yet on the /parents/1 page there would be nothing but a bit button saying "carry on" ... again, useless.
Do I creat separate routes, like the one above, purely for the API or am I missing a cleaner more 'Railsy' way.
EDIT
I'm not sure the above is totally clear. If I have an Exam that was completely made up of Questions, would the Rails way to be to link to /exam/1/questions or purely to /exam/1 with a list of questions. Obviously the API would go to /exam/1/questions in most cases but what about the standard HTML page? It would seem like it wants to be /exam/1 but with nested resources the create route (by default) goes to the /exam/1/questions route. If there is a validation error on the /exam/1/questions/new route the form is rendered again on the create (/exam/1/questions) route; if the page is then refreshed you then get a 404 error as there is no index for the children.
All this leads me to believe that Rails expects be an index action for the majority of models; but in the above example this feels odd.
If I understand you right you dont whant the route to /parents/1 to be on your path. For this reason you should specify it in your routes.rb
resource :parents, except: :show do
resource :children
end
I want to have a link at the bottom of my show.html.erb that links to the new action in a different controller.
class Sample < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :song
end
class Song < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :samples
end
So, at the bottom of the show action for songs, I want to link to new for samples. This seems pretty easy, but I'm struggling to figure this out. I would also like to pass the id from the song to the form as :song_id
Fiddy, because you're new, let me explain how this works...
Routes
Your problem is that you don't understand the Rails routing structure - I'll hopefully explain it for you.
Rails, since it's an MVC framework, builds a series of "routes" for you. These "routes" are stored in the file available at config/routes.rb.
Routes, as described by the Rails documentation are as follows:
The Rails router recognizes URLs and dispatches them to a controller's
action. It can also generate paths and URLs, avoiding the need to
hardcode strings in your views.
The most important thing you should consider here is the way the routes generate paths for you. These paths are simply Rails "helper" methods, which you can call from your views. The reason these exist is two-fold -
They provide you with a DRY (don't repeat yourself) way of accessing / manipulating data
They are constructed around objects, helping maintain the object-orientated nature of Rails
These will likely mean nothing to you. However, what you need to realize that if set up your routes correctly, it seriously helps your app's infrastructure immensely.
--
Rails
This leads us quite nicely onto appreciating the way in which Rails works
Rails is an MVC (model view controller) framework. This might seem somewhat trivial, but in reality, it's one of the most important aspects to learn about Rails development, and here's why:
The Rails software system works by taking "requests" (user input) and then routing them to specific controller#actions. Those controllers then build model data from the database, and will translate that into either variables or objects, which you can use in your view.
The reason I mention this is that this type of development takes a lot of getting used-to, in that your program's flow is not about logic / functionality, but the accessibility of data. Therefore, when you ask about the routes or other parts of your app, you need to firstly remember what data you wish to show, and also how you want that data to be shown - this will give you the ability to construct & use the routes / controller actions which will get it to work properly
--
Fix
In terms of what you're saying, the way you'd go about achieving the result you want will be to use a nested route:
#config/routes.rb
resources :songs do
resources :samples #-> domain.com/songs/:song_id/samples/new
end
This will create a new route for you (which you can check by firing rake routes in your rails c (console). This will give you a path to use for your samples#new action:
#app/views/songs/show.html.erb
<%= link_to #song.name, new_song_sample_path(#song) %>
The above link will take you to the samples#show action, which you'll be able to populate with as much data as you require from the samples controller. The important thing to note is this action will have params[:song_id] available for you to either build an object from, or otherwise
<%= link_to "New Sample", new_sample_path(:song_id => #song_id) %>
Where #song_id is the variable that has that id in it.
Set paths in link_to tag which you can get by running rake_routes in terminal.
Ex
link_to "New song", new_sample_path(#song)
In the example given above #song is the instance variable of your current page.
You can also get some idea from here:
link_to Base URL Randomly Changed
Song Model:
accepts_nested_attributes_for :sample, allow_destroy: true
Route:
resources :songs do
resources :samples
end
Song's Show file:
<%= link_to "New Sample", new_song_sample_path(#song) %>
in url it will be:
/songs/:song_id/sample/new
Try this and let me know it works or not... I hope this helps you
i'm just writing my first app in rails and i wonder, if there is a best practice to do the following:
i have a customer model created by a scaffold and pumping it up. a customer has to be displayed in a google map, so if go to /customers/23, the customer information are displayed. additionally i have a link within this page to show the user in a map (with a query ui dialog that comes up via ajax).
The question for me is, how does this fits in the normal crud structure of the model. Should i do like creating an action, called "show_map" and give it an extra route additionally to the resources routes? How do you handle this kind of things?
Lets do it like
resources :customers do
resource :map, :only => [:index]
end
it will generate routes like this
{:action=>"show", :controller=>"maps"} customer_map GET /customers/:customer_id/map(.:format)
I've created in rails(3) a new html page in my project model named contact.html.erb and I am interested in linking to it from a different page, i've added the code:
<%= link_to 'contact', contact_project_path(#project) %>
Project is a model that belongs_to a User (which is the contact in the contact page).
This link gives me an error message saying that contact_project_path doesnt exist. I know I need to define it somewhere but I don't know where or how. I want the page to be specific per project. I've created an action in the project_controler named contact and left it empty.
What am i missing?
I've searched for a soloution for quite some time and haven't found an answer to this question anywhere else. I'm aware its a little bit basic but I have no other options.
-REVISED ANSWER-
Based on comments I see you're not trying to associate a contact model, just a view. In that case, you still need to change the routes file, but you need to decide if you want to get a single contact page for all projects, or one contact view per project. IE:
# Collection Contact
example.com/projects/contact # IE One contact view for all projects
# Member Contact
example.com/projects/1/contact # IE One contact view per project
Either way you need to use a block for your project resource in your routes file. So, if you want there to be one contact page for the collection (all projects), do:
resources :projects do
collection do
get 'contact'
end
end
Or, if you want one contact view per member (one per project) do:
resources :projects do
member do
get 'contact'
end
end
Either way this will give you helper methods which you can put into link_to
For the collection it should be contact_projects_path (no arguments), and for members it should be contact_project_path(#project) (pass in the project as an argument.
You can use get post put delete or match as a parameter in a collection or member block, that just tells Rails what kind of request to handle at that URL, and what helpers to generate. For normal views you want a GET request.
I hope this finally answers your question :)
-ORIGINAL ANSWER-
This is for routing to a MODEL, not just a view
Add to your routes.rb:
resources :projects do
resource :contact
end
If I understand your question correctly, that should create a helper called project_contact_path().
This record will be projects/123/contact.
If you want more than one contact per project, you'll need to make it plural (resource :contacts). Then your records would look like projects/123/contacts/123.
See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html
You would link to this using link_to( project_contact_path(#project) ) if there's only one contact per project, or link_to( project_contact_path(#project,#contact) ) if there are multiple contacts per project.
Have a look here:
http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html
You should be aware that contact_project_path(#project) isn't a restful routes (unless contact_project is a model but there is little chance). You'll have to declare this name, use :as
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.