Question

I want to include the routes and the link_to method in a PORO. While testing this in the console I came accross this:

If I include UrlHelper without the routes helper everything seems to work fine:

ruby-1.9.3-rc1 :001 > Rails.version
=> "3.2.0.rc2" 
ruby-1.9.3-rc1 :001 > include ActionView::Helpers::UrlHelper
=> Object 
ruby-1.9.3-rc1 :002 > link_to "foo", Rails.application.routes.url_helpers.ponies_path
 => "<a href=\"/ponies\">foo</a>" 

If I include the routes:

ruby-1.9.3-rc1 :001 > include ActionView::Helpers::UrlHelper
ruby-1.9.3-rc1 :003 > include Rails.application.routes.url_helpers
 => Object 
ruby-1.9.3-rc1 :004 > link_to "foo", ponies_path

I get the following error:

NameError: undefined local variable or method `controller' for #<ApplicationController:0x007fa1497ecc40>

What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

As suggested you should use the app object for the routes part and you should be using the helper object for the link_to.
No need to include any of the helpers through Ruby when using the console:

helper.link_to "foo", app.ponies_path