Question

I have a blog in my website where only authenticated users can post. If an existing user that is not yet authenticated is typing a comment when he hits “create” he wil be redirected to the login view to authenticate and then redirected to the articles view. I would like to improve the functionality of my blog by rendering the view where the user was creating the comment so that he doesn’t have to type in his comment again.

I am rather new to programming and to ruby so I am not sure how to approach this problem. Any suggestions are welcomed. Thank you in advance.

My website can be found at https://github.com/MariusLucianPop/mariuslp-

Bellow are what I think are the important parts of the code. Let me know if you would like me to update anything.

comments_controller.rb

before_filter :confirm_logged_in, :only => [:create]


def create
  article_id = params[:comment].delete(:article_id)
  @comment = Comment.new(params[:comment])
  @comment.article_id = article_id
  @comment.posted_by = session[:username]
  @article = Article.find(article_id)
  if @comment.save
    redirect_to article_path(@article)
  else
    render "articles/show"    
  end
end

protected 

def confirm_logged_in
  unless session[:user_id]
    flash[:notice]="Please login before posting a comment."
    redirect_to login_path
    return false
  else
    return true
  end
end

visitors_controller.rb

def login
  #atempting to log in
  authenticated_user = Visitor.authenticate(params[:username],params[:password])
    if authenticated_user 
      session[:user_id]=authenticated_user.id
      session[:username]=authenticated_user.username
          flash[:notice] = "You are now logged in."
          redirect_to articles_path
      end
    else
      if !params[:username].blank? # only rendering the notice if the user tried to login at least once
        flash[:notice] = "Invalid username/password combination. Please try again"
      end
      render "login"
    end
end

routes.rb

  root :to => "static_pages#index"

  get "static_pages/work_in_progress"

  get "categories/new"
  match "work" => "static_pages#work_in_progress"

  match "login" => "visitors#login" # not rest
  match "logout" =>"visitors#logout" # not rest

  resources :articles do 
    resources :comments
  end

 resources :tags, :taggings, :visitors, :categories

 match 'contact' => 'contact#new', :as => 'contact', :via => :get
 match 'contact' => 'contact#create', :as => 'contact', :via => :post

Answer 1

A quick approach\KIS

app / views / articles / _comment_form.html.erb

<% if confirm_logged_in  %> # helper method to detect if current is logged in

  <%= form_for [@article,@article.comments.new] do |f|%>
    <%= f.hidden_field :article_id%>

    <%= f.label :body %><br />
    <%= f.text_area :body, :cols => 50, :rows => 6 %><br />

    <%= f.submit%>
  <%end%>

<% else %>

  <%= link_to "Login to add a comment", login_path %>

<% end %>