In my Rails 3 app, my 'show' view renders a submitted form. I'd like to create an 'info' view that displays different data from the same submitted form. It's basically an alternate show view.
I put this into my controller, but it doesn't work:
def show
#form = Form.find(params[:id])
end
def info
#form = Form.find(params[:id])
render :layout => 'info'
end
All it does is display the 'show' view. How do I correct this?
The problem must lie elsewhere, because those two actions look fine. In this example, your show action should use your show view, and your info action should use your info view (albeit with a layout also called "info" - you might want to consider renaming that so you don't get confused between your layout and your view).
Are you sure your routes are set up properly? Do you have an 'info' route set up for your Form model? i.e.
routes.rb:
resources :forms do
get :info
end
And are you navigating to the right URL? (in this case, http://yourhost/forms/123/info)?
You can call
def info
#form = Form.find(params[:id])
render :action => 'show'
end
and it will use the #form instance variable defined in the info method, make sure you have the proper routes setup
Related
I am new to Ruby on rails and am making a web application with a show page that should just simply display the data in my database based on the link clicked. I want to make it where I can just have one page that changes based on which recipe I select but I cant figure out how to differentiate between the links.
This is a basic restful route to go to the show action of a controller.
# config/routes.rb
Rails.application.routes.draw do
get '/recipes/:recipe_id', to: 'recipes_controller#show'
end
So your links could be something like: http://example.com/recipes/2
Which should load a page showing the information of the recipe with id 2
Now this is supposing you have a controller recipes_controller.rb with the show action to give you the info on that recipe
# app/controllers/recipes_controller.rb
class RecipesController < ApplicationController
...
def show
#recipe = Recipe.find(params[:recipe_id])
render 'show'
end
end
Now in the views/recipes/show.html.erb template or whatever view you render in the show action, you will have access to a <%= #recipe %> containing the values of your object.
I'm trying to build a profile page that displays posts sent only to the requested user, and allows the visitor to write a post of their own. Because this simplified example should have two distinct controllers: users and posts, I made partials for each post action to render within the user's show action.
Directory structure for my views directory looks like this:
- posts
- _index.html.erb
- _new.html.erb
- users
- show.html.erb
... (etc.)
Section that displays these partials within the user's show.html.erb:
<section>
<h3>Posts:</h3>
<%= render '/posts/new', :post => Post.new %>
<%= render '/posts/index', :posts => Post.where(target_id: params[:id]) %>
</section>
I eventually found out that you could pass variables into the partial in this render line, and though this works, it's very messy and probably doesn't follow the best practices.
Ideally, I'd want these partials to be connected with the posts controller so I can write more complex database queries in a place that isn't the view:
class PostsController < ApplicationController
def new
#post = Post.new
end
def index
#posts = Post.where(target_id: params[:id])
end
def create
#post = Post.new(post_params)
#post.user_id = current_user.id
#post.target_id = params[:post][:target_id]
if #post.save
redirect_to :back, notice: 'You published a post!'
else
render new
end
end
private
def post_params
params.require(:post).permit(:body)
end
end
Currently, I haven't found a way of doing this. I know this is a newb question, but thanks for any help in advance.
You are attempting to treat your controllers like models: doing the post work in post controller and the user work in user controller. But controllers are task-oriented, not model-oriented.
Since you want posts info in your user form, it's typical to gather it in the user controller. E.g.
class UsersController < ApplicationController
def show
...
#posts = Post.where(user_id: user.id)
end
end
That #posts instance variable is visible in the show template and any partials it calls. But many coders prefer to send it explicitly through render arguments, as more functional:
<%= render '/posts/post_list', posts: #posts %>
For one thing it's easier to refactor when you can see at a glance all of the partial's dependencies.
I agree somewhat with #Mori's advice. As he said, you are trying to put too much logic into the controller. I think this was a result of you trying to get it out of the view, which is the right idea, but you want business logic to be in the model.
Also, those index and new actions for PostsController are never going to be called. When you are calling the render posts/new for example, that is rendering the view, not the controller action. So, those controller actions have no reason to exist.
I would implement the fix in perhaps a different way than Mori described. It's a recommended practice to try and pass as few instance variables from the controller to the view as possible (see 3rd bullet in the linked section).
Since it's really the show action of the UsersController we are talking about here, I as someone trying to understand your code would assume the instance variable you are passing to the show view is something like #user.
You may want to use an includes method when instantiating the #user object. The includes statement will allow you to load the additional models you will need to instantiate using the minimum number of queries possible (preventing an N+1 query situation). You probably don't want to load every single one if there are thousands of matching posts, so I put an arbitrary limit of 10 on that.
UsersController
def show
#user = User.find(params[:id]).includes(:received_posts).limit(10)
end
#....
View
<section>
<h3>Posts:</h3>
<% unless #user.id == current_user.id %>
<%= render 'posts/form', post: Post.new(user_id: #user.id) %>
<% end %>
<%= render #user.received_posts %>
</section>
Putting the partial for a new post instead as a view called posts/form will allow you to reuse that form if you want to render an edit action (form_for knows which action to use on submit by calling the passed model's persisted? method).
Note that this code assumes the User model has the second relationship with posts set up to be called received_posts, but you can change it to whatever reflects the reality. By passing the received_posts collection to the render method, Rails is smart enough to know that if you want to render a collection of Post models to look for a posts/_post partial and render one for each Post. It's a little cleaner looking IMO. Just make sure to move your posts/show code into that. posts/show implies this is its own action and not something used as a partial for something else.
When I look at examples of Rails controllers, I usually see something like this:
class WidgetController < ActionController::Base
def new
#widget = Widget.new
end
def create
#widget = Widget.new(params[:id])
if #widget.save
redirect_to #widget
else
render 'new'
end
end
end
This works, but there's a couple problems:
Routes
If I add widgets to my routes.rb file:
Example::Application.routes.draw do
resources :widgets
end
GET /widgets/new will route to new and POST /widgets will route to create.
If the user enters incorrect information on the new widget page and submits it, their browser will display a URL with /widgets, but the new template will be rendered. If the user bookmarks the page and returns later or refreshes the page, the index action will be called instead of the new action, which isn't what the user expects. If there's no index action or if the user doesn't have permission to view it, the response will be a 404.
Duplication of code
As a contrived example, let's say I had some tricky logic in my new method:
def new
#widget = Widget.new
do_something_tricky()
end
Using the current approach, I'd duplicate that logic in new and create. I could call new from create, but then I'd have to modify new to check if #widget is defined:
def new
#widget ||= Widget.new
do_something_tricky()
end
Plus, this feels wrong because it reduces the orthogonality of the controller actions.
What to do?
So what's the Rails way of resolving this problem? Should I redirect to new instead of rendering the new template? Should I call new inside of create? Should I just live with it? Is there a better way?
I don't think this is a problem in "the rails way" and there is no builtin functionality to allow this without getting your hands dirty. What does a user expects when bookmarking a form they just submitted and had errors? Users don't know better, and they shouldn't bookmark a failed form.
I think redirecting to new_widget_path is the cleanest solution. Yet, you should keep the errors and display them on the form. For this I recommend you keep the params in session (which I expect to be smaller than a serialized Widget object).
def new
#widget = widget_from_session || Widget.new
end
def widget_from_session
Widget.new(session.delete(:widget_params)) if session[:widget_params].present?
end
private :widget_from_session
# Before the redirect
session[:widget_params] = params
The code is self explanatory, Widget.new will only be called when widget_from_session returns nil, this is when session[:widget_params] is present. Calling delete on a hash will return de deleted value and delete it from the original hash.
UPDATE Option 2
What about submitting the form using ajax? Your controller could benefit from:
respond_to :html, :json
...
def create
#widget = Widget.new params[:widget]
#widget
respond_with #widget, location: nil
end
Based on the response code (which is set by Rails: 201 Created or 422 Unprocessable Entity), you could show the errors (available in the body of the response when validations fail) or redirect the user to #widget
This is how StackOverflow does it: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask. They submit the form asynchronously.
In general, I think the Rails way of solving the problem would be to put the tricky method onto the model or as a helper method, so the controller stays "thin" and you don't have to make sure to add custom behavior to both #new and #create.
EDIT: For further reading, I'd recommend the "Rails AntiPatterns" book, as they go through a lot of these common design issues and give potential solutions.
you put do_something_tricky() in its own method and call it inside the create action (but only when you're rendering the new template, ie when validation fails).
As for the bookmark issue, I don't know a good way to prevent that but to modify the routes and set the create action to the new action but using POST
get '/users/new' => 'users#new'
post '/users/new' => 'users#create'
UPDATE: using resources
resources :platos, except: :create do
post '/new' => 'plates#create', on: :collection, as: :create
end
then you can use create_platos_path in your forms
You don't need to write same function in two action , use before_filter instead.
If you want to have "widget_new_url" after incorrect submission then in your form add url of new widget path something like :url => widget_new_path .
Rails takes the url from Form .
I have this problem before, so I use edit action instead.
Here is my code.
Routes:
resources :wines do
collection do
get :create_wine, as: :create_wine
end
end
Controller:
def create_wine
#wine = Wine.find_uncomplete_or_create_without_validation(current_user)
redirect_to edit_wine_path(#wine)
end
def edit
#wine = Wine.find(params[:id])
end
def update
#wine = Wine.find(params[:id])
if #wine.update_attributes(params[:wine])
redirect_to #wine, notice: "#{#wine.name} updated"
else
render :edit
end
end
Model:
def self.find_uncomplete_or_create_without_validation(user)
wine = user.wines.uncomplete.first || self.create_without_validation(user)
end
def self.create_without_validation(user)
wine = user.wines.build
wine.save(validate: false)
wine
end
View:
= simple_form_for #wine, html: { class: 'form-horizontal' } do |f|
= f.input :complete, as: :hidden, input_html: { value: 'true' }
What I did is create a new action 'create_wine' with get action.
If user request 'create_wine', it will create a new wine without validation and redirect to edit action with a update form for attributes and a hidden field for compele .
If user has create before but gave up saving the wine it will return the last uncompleted wine.
Which means whether use save it or not, the url will be the same to /wines/:id.
Not really good for RESTful design, but solve my problem. If there is any better solution please let me know.
I am writing a Ruby on Rails application with a controller called "pages_controller" that is responsible for displaying pages to users. There are 3 different types of pages that can be displayed, and different things have to happen on the back end in each case, so I decided to break the functionality out into 3 methods within the controller. When the user requests a page, the "show" method is called, which figures out whether the page:
1. Belongs to the user
2. Belongs to another user, and can be viewed by the user requesting it
3. Belongs to another user, and cannot be viewed by the user requesting it (unauthorized)
The appropriate method is then called from there to display the page. The code looks something like this:
def show
if (something)
showMine
elsif (something else)
showAnother
else
showUnauthorized
end
end
def showUnauthorized
respond_to do |format|
format.html # showUnauthorized.html.erb
end
end
def showMine
respond_to do |format|
format.html # showMine.html.erb
end
end
def showAnother
respond_to do |format|
format.html # showAnother.html.erb
end
end
I am getting a template missing error because rails wants to render a view when "show" is called, but I do not want any views to be rendered when "show" is called. I simply want "show" to call the correct method from there, and the corresponding view for that method (showMine, showAnother, or showUnauthorized) to be rendered. How can I do this? Or am I going about this the wrong way entirely?
You need to declare these new actions that you have created in the routes file, as they don't belong to the RESTful routes.
I sugest to keep only the show action in your controller and create the IFs in the show view using the render method to include the partials(_showMine.html.erb, showAnother.html.erb, showUnauthorized)
example:
show view:
if (something)
<%= render 'showMine' %>
elsif (something else)
<%= render 'showAnother' %>
else
<%= render 'showUnauthorized' %>
end
I hope it helps...
I basically agree with Samy's comment, but here's some background:
The method that tells Rails what view to use is render. If there's no call to that method in your show method, Rails assumes you have a view called show.xxx.xxx, e.g. show.html.erb, that is supposed to be rendered. Note that it doesn't assume template will be prefixed with show because that's the name of the method. It assumes it will be show because that's the name of the action. The name of the action is passed to the controller as part of the request; it's not simply derived from the name of whatever method has a respond_to block in it.
All the respond_to blocks do is specify different view templates based on the MIME type of the request, but since you never call render, all of those extra methods are still trying to call the show view (show.html.erb in every case), because you never told Rails to render any other view, and the action name is show.
So, instead of the respond_to blocks, just call render [some_view] in each of your other methods.
This might not be the clearest answer, but I'd suggest also reading the following:
http://ryanbigg.com/2009/04/how-rails-works-2-mime-types-respond_to/
It describes what respond_to does, in particular how it keys off the action name to determine what view to render.
I have a page which shows a book and it's many reviews. On this page there is also a form to write a new review and post it to the create action of the reviews controller. When you post the form, the id of the corresponding book gets sent also so that the relationship can be established correctly.
At the reviews controller, we attempt to save the review. Here is what my controller looks like:
def create
#review = current_user.reviews.build(params[:review])
#book = Book.find_by_ean params[:book]
#review.book = #book
if #review.save
redirect_to book_path(#book)
else
# In here I want to go back to book_path(#book), sending #review with it so that I can have access to #review.errors
end
end
Of course, when the review fails to save (review content is mandatory for example) I would like to go back to the book show page and display the form, along with errors to the user. Now as far as I can work out, there are 2 possibilities here:
render "books/show", :review => #review --- This does send back the review with accompanying errors (I think, not 100% on this) but the URL stays as "/reviews" which causes a ton of it's own problems. For example partials which I keep in the "/books" directory can't be found.
redirect_to book_path(#book) --- This does get me back to the right URL but it doesn't send the #review with it so I can't show the error messages.
What's the best way to solve this problem?
I usually solve this by sending the psot data to a member action in the original controller (in this case books) instead of a nested controller. For example:
# routes.rb
resources :books do
member do
post 'create_review'
end
end
And then in your view
# books/show.html.erb
<%= form_for #new_review, :url => create_review_book_path(#book) do |f| %>
...
<% end %>
And finally in your books controller
# books_controller.rb
def create_review
#book = Book.find(params[:id])
#new_review = #book.reviews.build(params[:review])
if #new_review.save
#new_review = Review.new
end
render :action => :show
end
What happens is that the form has been manually directed to post it's data to our new member route in the books controller. If the Review is successfully saved, then we assign a new review object to the variable in preparation for the next review. If it is not succesfull, then the #new_review variable will contain the errors which can be accessed in the form.
Well, you can't really pass an object through the get params (with a redirect) unless you serialize it and you don't want that.
I see two solutions for this problem.
1) Save the review in the books controller
2) Make the form submit via ajax and update the form in the review controller using "render :update"
I don't know which one is the best, this depents on the project specs like can you use ajax?