I am generating a url in my controller accessed from the relative path “/hangouts/test”, for a url on an external site (facebook). I want to use url_for and pass in params using hashes so it can escape them. The URL I want is this:
http://www.facebook.com/connect/prompt_permissions.php?api_key=6aca22e72866c7eaaedfb15be69c4b93&…
Using this, however:
url_for(:host => "www.facebook.com/connect/prompt_permissions.php?", :api_key => Facebooker.api_key, :next => test_hangouts_url, :cancel => root_url, :ext_perm => "publish_stream")
I instead get my current path of /hangouts/test thrown in there:
http://www.facebook.com/connect/prompt_permissions.php/hangouts/test?api_key=6aca22e72866c7eaaedfb15be69c4b93&…
As you can see, I don’t want “/hangouts/test” to be in there – played a bit with the options in the API docs but stumped, anybody know how to use url_for without it inserting the current path? Thanks!
You shouldn’t be using the hash form of url_for to generate links outside of your application.
Instead you should just be using the string version form:
url_for will use the current action controller/action/id unless the hash given to url_for contains one of those arguments. url_for will then generate a url from a route that matches the arguments given in the hash. The arguments to url_for used in the question generates a valid url, because it can match a route using the current controller/action. You will not be able to generate the url you want with the hash form of url for without matching a route. Providing a controller in the hash you give url_for should match the default routes that rails generates for you when you create an application, but that’s not very DRY.
The better solution is to use a named route:
then you can use the following in place of url_for whenever you want to generate this this url.