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! :)"

# 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

# app/models/forum.rb

class Forum < ActiveRecord::Base
  def to_param
    "#{id}-#{name.parameterize}"
  end
end

# app/models/forum_topic.rb

class ForumTopic < ActiveRecord::Base
  def to_param
    "#{id}-#{name.parameterize}"
  end
end

# app/controllers/forums/show.hmtl.erb

link_to @forum_topic.name, forum_topic_path(@forum_topic)
# OR
link_to @forum_topic.name, @forum_topic

# What is being generated by link_to :

"/helpcenter/cat/1-first-topic/topics/1-first-forum"

# What I expected to see (because topics should be in forums):

"/helpcenter/cat/1-first-forum/topics/1-first-topic"

# What am I doing wrong?

puts "Thanks!"

Answer 1

The primary paths should be:

forum_topic_path(@forum, @topic)  
forum_topics_path(@forum)

The param (@forum_topic) you passed in

link_to @forum_topic.name, forum_topic_path(@forum_topic)

Has one :id associated with it (1), so it will show the forum with id=1. You should also be passing the topic id

forum_topic_path(@forum, @topic)

Surprised you didn’t get an error without the id–I am guessing that it inferred the :id to both resources.