Question

I’m having trouble understanding routing. Plus I’m trying to understand the resources (and resource) key word in routes.rb.

I created home_controller.rb, and put “resources :home” in routes.rb. I ran rake routes, and i can see all that stuff, but I don’t know what to do with it. I simply want to display a page with a form, say index.html.erb, submit the form, do something in the controller, then display the exact same page again.

I think I want to invoke a PUT “/home”, or something, but I’m not sure what my href should look like in the erb page.

Then, what method in home_controller.rb will capture that submit?

Then, do I do a redirect back to index.html.erb, perhaps?

I’m trying not to use scaffolding or generators, so that I can understand what is going on. Any help appreciated. btw, rails 3.

Answer 1

Here is a quick run down of what you need to get started:

1. Every HTTP request in a rails app is routed to exactly one controller method. That controller method fulfills the request by either rendering some content or issuing a 302 redirect (which causes the browser to issue a different request).

2. A route in ROR describes how each HTTP request is mapped to each controller method. HTTP requests are mapped based on two attributes: the requested url and the HTTP verb (GET POST PUT etc).

3. When you do resources :homes in your routes.rb file your are telling Rails you have a controller called HomesController you are asking Rails to set up its conventional RESTful routes for that controller. These are as follows:

HTTP GET on /homes url

• mapped to the index method
• usually used to list all of the homes records

HTTP GET on /homes/1 url

• mapped to the show method
• usually used to show the home record with id = 1

HTTP GET on /homes/new url

• mapped to the new method
• usually used render a form for creating a new home record

HTTP POST on /homes url

• mapped to the create method
• where the new form is submitted to
• used to create a new home record
• usually responds with a redirect

HTTP GET on /homes/1/edit url

• mapped to the edit method
• usually used to render a form for editing home record with id=1

HTTP PUT on /homes/1 url

• mapped to the update method
• where the edit form is submitted to
• used to edit the record with id=1
• usually responds with a redirect

HTTP DELETE on /homes/1 url

• mapped to the delete method
• usually used to destroy the record with id=1
• usually responds with a redirect