Question

I had hard time to figure out why I’ve been getting “unknown action” error message when I was do some editing:

Unknown action
No action responded to 11. Actions: bin, create, destroy, edit, index, new, observe_new, show,  tag, update, and vote

you can see that Rails did mention each action in the above list – update. And in my form, I did specify action = “update”.

I wonder if some friends could kindly help me with the missing links…

here is the code:

edit.rhtml

<h1>Editing tip</h1>

<% form_tag :action => 'update', :id => @tip do %>
  <%= render :partial => 'form' %>

  <p>
    <%= submit_tag_or_cancel 'Save Changes' %>
  </p>
<% end %>

_form.rhtml

<%= error_messages_for :tip %>

<p><label>Title<br/>
<%= text_field :tip, :title %></label></p>

<p><label>Categories<br/>
<%= select_tag('categories[]', options_for_select(Category.find(:all).collect {|c| [c.name, c.id] }, @tip.category_ids), :multiple => true ) %></label></p>

<p><label>Abstract:<br/>
<%= text_field_with_auto_complete :tip, :abstract %></label></p>

<p><label>Name: <br/>
<%= text_field :tip, :name %></label></p>

<p><label>Link: <br/>
<%= text_field :tip, :link %></label></p>

<p><label>Content<br/>
<%= text_area :tip, :content, :rows => 5 %></label></p>

<p><label>Tags <span>(space separated)</span><br/>
<%= text_field_tag 'tags', @tip.tag_list, :size => 40 %></label></p>

class TipsController < ApplicationController
 before_filter :authenticate, :except => %w(index show)

  # GET /tips
  # GET /tips.xml
  def index
    @tips = Tip.all
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html # index.html.erb
      format.xml  { render :xml => @tips }
    end
  end

  # GET /tips/1
  # GET /tips/1.xml
  def show
    @tip = Tip.find_by_permalink(params[:permalink])
    respond_to do |format|
      format.html # show.html.erb
      format.xml  { render :xml => @tip }
    end
  end

  # GET /tips/new
  # GET /tips/new.xml
 def new
    @tip = session[:tip_draft] || current_user.tips.build
  end

 def create
    #tip = current_user.tips.build(params[:tip])  
    #tipMail=params[:email]
    #if tipMail 
    #  TipMailer.deliver_email_friend(params[:email], params[:name], tip)
    #  flash[:notice] = 'Your friend has been notified about this tip'
    #end

    @tip = current_user.tips.build(params[:tip])
    @tip.categories << Category.find(params[:categories]) unless params[:categories].blank?
    @tip.tag_with(params[:tags]) if params[:tags]

    if @tip.save
      flash[:notice] = 'Tip was successfully created.'
      session[:tip_draft] = nil
      redirect_to :action => 'index'
    else
      render :action => 'new'
    end
  end


  def edit
    @tip = Tip.find(params[:id])
  end

  def update
    @tip = Tip.find(params[:id])
    respond_to do |format|
      if @tip.update_attributes(params[:tip])
        flash[:notice] = 'Tip was successfully updated.'
        format.html { redirect_to(@tip) }
        format.xml  { head :ok }
      else
        format.html { render :action => "edit" }
        format.xml  { render :xml => @tip.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end
  end


  def destroy
    @tip = Tip.find(params[:id])
    @tip.destroy

    respond_to do |format|
      format.html { redirect_to(tips_url) }
      format.xml  { head :ok }
    end
  end



 def observe_new
    session[:tip_draft] = current_user.tips.build(params[:tip])
    render :nothing => true
  end


end

Answer 1

the quick answer is that form_tag doesn’t support :action as an option, you want to be passing a string as a path in. A slightly longer answer is you shouldn’t be using form_tag anyways for a model edit form, you should be using form_for.

what rails are you using? .rhtml is pretty old, rails generators should be giving you .html.erb files. if it is something even remotely recent, you should be able to use

<% form_for @tip do |f| %>
  <%= f.label :title, 'Title' %><br />
  <%= f.text_field %>
  ... etc
<% end %>