Rails: Link to partials? - ruby-on-rails

Question

At the moment I try to do following:
I created several partials (i.e. _show_signature.html.erb) for my user.
Now I want to show them on clicking a link.
In my user controller, I created a new action:
def show_signature
#is_on_show_signature = true
end
def show_information
#is_on_show_information = true
end
on my user show.html.erb i coded this:
<% if #is_on_show_information %>
<%= render :partial => 'show_information' %>
<% elsif #is_on_show_signature %>
<%= render :partial => 'show_signature' %>
<% end %>
and in my "navigationbar" i wrote:
<ul>
<li class="profile-tab">
<%= link_to 'Information', show_information_path %>
</li>
<li class="profile-tab">
<%= link_to 'Signature', show_signature_path %>
</li>
</ul>
In my routes.rb I wrote:
map.show_information '/user-information', :controller => 'user', :action => 'show_information'
map.show_signature '/user-signature', :controller => 'user', :action => 'show_signature'
now my problem:
clicking on my "information" link will redirect me to http://localhost:3000/user-information (cause I told him this path in routes.rb - I think) and I get an error:
uninitialized constant UserController
But that's not what I want... My user show path is something like:
http://localhost:3000/users/2-loginname
(by coding
def to_param
"#{id}-#{login.downcase.gsub(/[^[:alnum:]]/,'-')}".gsub(/-{2,}/,'-')
end
in my user model)
I want to link to somethink like http://localhost:3000/users/2-test/user-information.
Any ideas how it will work? Any ideas why I get this error?

Answer 1

As far as Rails conventions go, the model itself is singular (User) but the table (users) and controller (UsersController) are both pluralized. This can cause a significant amount of confusion at first, and even after years of working with Rails I still make the mistake of trying things like 'user = Users.first' which is, of course, not valid, as often you get to thinking about table names instead of class names.
Also, for toggling the display of elements on a page, you probably want to use the link_to_remote method which uses AJAX for updates instead of a page refresh. If you're okay with a full page refresh, those actions will need to redirect_to something, such as the page referrer, or you will get a blank page or error since the page template does not exist.
Typically what you do is:
<ul>
<li class="profile-tab">
<%= link_to_remote 'Information', show_information_path %>
</li>
<li class="profile-tab">
<%= link_to_remote 'Signature', show_signature_path %>
</li>
</ul>
Then each action is as you have specified, however, the page template show_information.rjs would look like:
page.replace_html('extra_information', :partial => 'show_information')
Keep in mind you will need to have a placeholder to receive the partial contents, so simply wrap your optional sections in an element with a specific ID:
<div id="extra_information">
<% if #is_on_show_information %>
<%= render :partial => 'show_information' %>
<% elsif #is_on_show_signature %>
<%= render :partial => 'show_signature' %>
<% end %>
</div>