Question

# Explaining the context

puts "I am learning Rails, building a simple forum application."
puts "I am pretty satisfied to where I got so far but routes... "
puts "...still figuring them out."
puts "Been 2 days trying all sorts of things."
puts "This is where I am now, and something is not working as expected."
puts "Any help/pointers would be appreciated! :)"

# The Problem

puts "I want my forum's create path to be '/helpcenter' and not '/helpcenter/cat'."
puts "When I access the form to create a new forum and I hit submit, "
puts "the form post to '/helpcenter' correctly (firebuged)"
puts "but I get the index, not the create!"
puts "I even put debugger in my create action but it is not being called."

# config/routes.rb

scope "/helpcenter" do
  resources :cat, :controller => "forums", :as => :forums do
    resources :topics , :controller => "forum_topics", :as => :topics
    resources :posts, :controller => "forum_posts", :as => :posts
  end
end

match "/helpcenter" => "forums#index", :as => :forums
match "/helpcenter" => "forums#create", :via => :post, :as => :create_forum

I hope this problem is in the way I created the route. I tried many different things.

# _form.html.erb

<%= form_for(@forum) do |f| %>
....
<% end %>

I am using standard form_for helper.

# Rake Routes for Forums

$ CONTROLLER=forums rake routes
delete_forum GET    /helpcenter/cat/:id/delete(.:format) forums#delete
      forums GET    /helpcenter/cat(.:format)            forums#index
             POST   /helpcenter/cat(.:format)            forums#create
   new_forum GET    /helpcenter/cat/new(.:format)        forums#new
  edit_forum GET    /helpcenter/cat/:id/edit(.:format)   forums#edit
       forum GET    /helpcenter/cat/:id(.:format)        forums#show
             PUT    /helpcenter/cat/:id(.:format)        forums#update
             DELETE /helpcenter/cat/:id(.:format)        forums#destroy
      forums        /helpcenter(.:format)                forums#index
create_forum POST   /helpcenter(.:format)                forums#create

We clearly see a route for POST /helpcenter which is binded to the create action of the forums controller.

# Logs

Started POST "/helpcenter" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-07-02 12:25:00 -0400
Processing by ForumsController#index as HTML
  Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"d5iVKCh234234=", "forum"=>{"name"=>"", "description"=>""}, "commit"=>"Save Changes"}

The logs clearly shows I am doing a POST on /helpcenter but that it fires up the index action instead of the create action!

# What am I doing wrong?

puts "Thanks!"

Answer 1

I think the request matches your first forums route since you didn’t specify a HTTP method. This should work:

match "/helpcenter" => "forums#index", :via => :get, :as => :forums
match "/helpcenter" => "forums#create", :via => :post, :as => :create_forum

Or the shorthand version:

get "/helpcenter" => "forums#index", :as => :forums
post "/helpcenter" => "forums#create", :as => :create_forum