Question

I have an application where the user selects the product they wish to view.

1. View index of products and select one
2. The products show action is called and show.html.erb is viewed. url => /products/3

Now if the user clicks the index of the products they are again shown all the products. But I want them to be able to easily return to the product they were viewing.

The url for the products index: /products
I can’t add the product id because this won’t show the index page: /products/3
will go to the show page for product with id 3

Is there a good way to keep this information neatly in the url without doing something ugly like:

/products?product_id=3

Answer 1

How about storing that data in the session?

class ProductsController
  def index
    @products = Product.all
  end

  def show
    @product = Product.find(params[:id])
    session[:last_viewed_product] = @product.id
  end
end

# Somewhere in your product layout

<% if session[:last_viewed_product] %>
  <%= link_to "View last product", product_path(session[:last_viewed_product]) %>
<% end %>