Rails newbie here.
Can anyone please explain the difference to me between the following lines of code:
match '/' => 'posts#index'
and
match '/' => 'posts#index', :as => 'posts'
The reason I'm asking is because when I use the latter code, I cannot create new posts :|
The latter is creating a named route. It creates a helper that you can call from your views, in this case, posts_path & posts_url.
That being said, I'm not sure how you are able to create new posts with either of those as you are not defining the posts#new or posts#create. Is there more to your routes file than these? Also, I'm not sure if it's a requirement or not, but you should pass your :as option as a symbol, so :as => :posts.
For reference, you can run rake routes from console and see a list of all the routes that are defined in your application. You'll also see how they are named—that's the column all the way to the right—which you can then append _path or _url to.
Related
In the answer to this question about routes in Devise: Devise & Custom Rails User URLs
There is a line of code:
match '/:user' => "users#show", :as => :user_profile
That apparently works for the question asker, but not for me. I end up with
NoMethodError in UsersController#show
undefined method `books' for nil:NilClass
when I go to localhost:3000/username instead of localhost:3000/user/username. I assume because the match line above isn't working correctly and that url does not refer to any user, according to my routes file.
The second url routes me to the user's show page, but I don't want the extra /user in the url.
So I'm trying to figure out exactly what '/:user', :as, and :user_profile mean because I think I'm supposed to substitute a few things here specific to my app. I think :as is some kind of aliased method. I can't find anything in the Devise documentation about a route called user_profile. And I don't know what '/:user' is referring to. An instance of the User object? A user attribute/unique column in my database that I use to refer to specific users? (I use permalink for my user-defined urls).
The route is working for you. Thats why ur getting error from users_controller#show.
In your show action you must be doing something like User.where(:id => params[:id]). But in this case, the attribute in your params is called :user . So to make make both routes work, without any change in the show action, change the route to
match '/:id' => "users#show", :as => :user_profile
Devise documentation won't refer to a 'user_profile' because it is a custom route being used to help address the issue that the questioner (in the linked question) was asking.
match '/:user' => "users#show" means "match any route with a single parameter after / that doesn't match a previously defined route, pair this route to the UsersController 'show' action (passing along the singe parameter as 'user')"
Modifying a route using :as => :anything will provide several helper methods to refer to this route that may be used in controllers, views, and mailers (in this case anything_path and anything_url).
As far as why this won't work for you, this is likely do to a problem with this entry in regard to the rest of your routes or because of your controller action itself. Posting these can help someone track down the exact reason...
I have my routes arranged so that when visiting the site the :id is displayed before the slug like so
match "/causes/:id/:slug" => "causes#show", :as => :cause, :via => 'get'
But I also have a nested attribute called "post" that belongs to causes like so
match "/causes/:id/:slug/posts" => "causes#posts", :via => 'get', :as => :posts
When I use this, everything works great for the causes, but not for the posts.
If I use
#post = Post.find(params[:id])
in causes or posts controller it always looks for the ID of the causes, and not the :id of the posts. So if the post :id is 9, and the cause :id is 1, and I use
#post = Post.find(params[:id])
it will always look for post[1] and not 9 or whatever the post id really is.
What am I doing wrong? Is there a way to make this work in the routes, or maybe a different way to find the id of a nested object in the controller?
I need the route to be the way I have it set up, :id/:slug...
rake routes information:
cause GET /causes/:id/:slug(.:format) causes#show
edit_cause GET /causes/:id/:slug/edit(.:format) causes#edit
PUT /causes/:id/:slug(.:format) causes#update
posts GET /causes/:id/:slug/posts(.:format) causes#posts
POST /causes/:id/:slug/posts(.:format)
PUT /causes/:id/:slug/posts(.:format) causes#update_post
DELETE /causes/:id/:slug/posts(.:format) causes#destroy_post
causes GET /causes(.:format) causes#index
POST /causes(.:format) causes#create
Any help would be great.
To solve your immediate problem, you'll want to add something like this to routes.rb
# config/routes.rb
match "/causes/:cause_id/:slug/post/:id" => "causes#update_post", :via => 'put', :as => :update_post
And then you can generate the URL in your views like this...
link_to 'Update this post', update_post_path(#cause, #post)
...and access the parameters in your controller as params[:id] (for the post) and params[:cause_id] (for the cause).
More generally, though, the way you are specifying your routes is pretty cumbersome, and I suspect you're making your life harder than it needs to be. If this were me, I would do something like
# config/routes.rb
resources :causes do
resources :posts
end
This would accomplish something pretty close to what you have now, the main difference being that it wouldn't contain slugs. I'm not sure why you need to have both slugs and IDs, maybe you could just identify your causes by their slugs? Stringex is a good gem for generating slugs, and you can set it so that slugs are guaranteed to be unique.
Here is the section of the Rails guide on nested resources
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html#nested-resources
And here is a Railscast about using slugs with nested resources
http://railscasts.com/episodes/314-pretty-urls-with-friendlyid?view=comments
Hope this helps.
This is because you're using the id of the cause, and if you're doing /causes/:id/posts shouldn't you be doing #posts = #cause.postsanyway?
I would look into the new router syntax for rails 3 if I were you, as there is a nicer way to nest resources http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html
edit:
use the friendly_id gem and nest your resources, to avoid confusion follow REST best practises that resource in question is at the end so
/causes/:slug/posts/:slug
I have a controller in a Rails 3 app named "my_store." I would like to be able to use this controller as is, except replacing "my_store" in all the URL's with another name. I do not want to rename the controller file, and all the references to it. Is there a clean way to do this with just a routing statement?
If you use RESTful routes:
resources :another_name, :controller => "my_store"
Otherwise:
match "another_name" => "my_store"
If your routes are RESTful, this is pretty easy.
resources :photos, :controller => "images"
You can see how to do this and other helpful Rails routing information in the Rails routing guide.
Update, the other guys are correct, to replace all references you would change the resources name and corresponding controller in routes.rb! My answer is only good to set a specific route.
Yup, you would do this in your routes.rb using the :as option to specify
example:
match 'exit' => 'sessions#destroy', :as => :logout
source
I've managed to get my routes set up (with help from these questions Routing without the model name and Permalinks with Ruby on Rails (dynamic routes)) so that articles can be accessed via my-domain/permalink rather than my-domain/articles/permalink or, the original my-domain/articles/id
Now I would like to make the paths that the link_to helper gives point to /permalink rather than /articles/permalink. I've looked at http://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html#overriding-the-named-helpers and see how I could redirect to eg. /images/permalink, but can't see how to have no model name present.
Can anyone suggest a way to do this?
Using :as on a match ... line in your routes file will make this work (it operates a little differently from using :as on a resources ... line):
match '/:id' => 'articles#show', :as => "article_permalink", :via => 'get'
Then you can do:
link_to "Show", article_permalink_path(article)
See Naming Routes in the Rails Guides
I am reading Obie Fernandez' "The Rails 3 Way", and there is a bit of it that I am not sure I understand correctly. I am new to rails, and want to make sure I understand it correctly. I have some experience with vanilla Ruby. Not much, but some.
The text in question is as follows: (regarding routing and the config/routes.rb file)
"...
By creating a route like
match 'auctions/:id' => "auction#show", :as => 'auction'
you gain the ability to use nice helper methods in situations like
link_to item.description, auction_path(item.auction)
..."
My question is, specifically what part of match 'auctions/:id' => "auction#show", :as => 'auction' creates the helper functions? (such as link_to auction and auction_path() ) Is it the :as => 'auction' part? Would any helpers be created without appending :as => 'auction'?
My confusion stems from other guides I have seen where this is omitted, and yet helpers seem to be created regardless. What specifically does rails use in match statements in the routes.rb file to create helpers? If it isn't the :as => 'auction' part, then what is the specific purpose of appending this to the match statement?
I know this seems like a super basic question, but this detail seems to get glossed over in the texts I have read thus far. Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this.
I just tried this:
match "alfa/beta", to: 'users#new'
In this case, even without an :as => 'named_route', I got for free the following helper
alfa_beta_path
which, as expected, points to users#new.
So, it seems that helpers are also automagically generated by parsing the route's string, in case there is no :as specification.
Yes, it is the :as => 'named_route' part that creates the named route (which in turn creates the helpers). As for leaving it off, are you referring to instances of resources :something in routes.rb? The resources method generates a set of URL helpers based on the name of the resource automagically.