Question

I am using Rails tutorial with example book by Michael Hartl as a reference for this question.

Here i am using rails 3.1.3 . What is the best way to use Named Routes

routes.rb

 root :to => "pages#home"
  match '/contact', :to => 'pages#contact' 
  match '/about', :to => 'pages#about'      
  match '/help', :to => 'pages#help' 

When I access these routes from a view using about I find no error but when I am access it by “about_path” I get an error. But in the book they use about_path. Have the concept of named routes changed in rails 3.1 ?

        <li><%= link_to "About", '*about*' %></li>
        <li><%= link_to "Contact", 'contact' %></li>
        <li><%= link_to "Home", 'root_path' %></li>

If i use “about_path” in the above code I get an error ‘route not found’

Question 1. What is the best way to use named routes inside the views? (Best way means I only need to change the route path at single place )

Question 2. How can i access root with concept of named routes?
(I get an error message when i try to access it using ‘root_path’).

Answer 1

JP:guard2 jayparteek$ rake routes
   root  /                  {:controller=>"pages", :action=>"home"}
contact  /contact(.:format) {:controller=>"pages", :action=>"contact"}
  about  /about(.:format)   {:controller=>"pages", :action=>"about"}
   help  /help(.:format)    {:controller=>"pages", :action=>"help"}

Accessing Named routes from views

    <li><%= link_to "About", 'about' %></li>
        <li><%= link_to "Contact", 'contact' %></li>
        <li><%= link_to "News-Home", '/' %></li>

Routes

  match '/contact' => 'pages#contact' 
  match '/about' => 'pages#about'      
  match '/help' => 'pages#help' 

  root :to => "pages#home"