Question

I have a rails 3 app and I’m trying to use a button to activate a method in a controller. Meaning that in my users_controller.rb I have

def follow
  ...
  ...
end

And in the view (users/show.html.erb) I want a button to call that method.
I currently have <%= button_to("Un-Follow", :controller=>"users", :action=> "follow") %>, however when i click on the button I get the following error: No route matches [POST] "/users/5/follow" any idea why?

I’m not sure how to fix this.

EDIT: I fixed the config/routes.rb and fixed that error. However I am still getting an error on the controller. nil id.

EDIT: I was able to get everything working error free. However now when I click the button, it says no view associated. However, I want to just call that method, I do not want a new view. Would it be best to, instead of in the controller, do it in a helper?

EDIT: Lastly, for some reason, when I click the “follow” button everything works. However when I click the “unfollow” button it doesn’t work.

Answer 1

You don’t necessarily need a view for a controller action. You may just render arbitrary text.

def follow
    ...
    render :text => 'ok', :layout => false
end

Or instead of rendering a view, you may redirect to another page.

def follow
    ...
    redirect_to :action => :index
end