Question

Currently when a user in my app creates a new job post they enter a URL that links to their job page on their website. I then want to use this to link out to their site.

It is stored in my DB asjob.job_url and I have defined an object @link in my controller to find the job and relevant URL.

I currently have the following code to loop through all jobs and provide links:

 <section id="job-wrapper">
   <% @jobs.each do |job| %>
    <%= link_to @link.job_url do %>
       <%= job.title %>
       <%= job.location %>
       <%= job.job_type %>
       <%= job.salary %>
       <%= job.company %>
   <% end %>
  <% end %>
 </section>

The issue I am having is that without the URL containing http:// rails assumes that the link is internal and so produces a link like localhost:3000/www.google.com.

Is there a way for me to ensure Rails only ever recognises the link as external in the instance? Alternatively could someone explain how I can add http:// to all links on creation unless the user has already stated it?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

Thanks for all your help!

I managed to solve this by creating a new helper called URLhelper

This contained:

 module UrlHelper
   def url_with_protocol(url)
     /^http/.match(url) ? url : "http://#{url}"
   end
 end

I then just used the following link_to

 <%= link_to url_with_protocol(@link.job_url), :target => '_blank' do %>

Thanks