Question

I’m taking saas class and while doing the homework 2, the rails app generates parameterized URLs like http://localhost:3000/movies?sort=title.

However other URLs on the page are like http://localhost:3000/movies/new or http://localhost:3000/movies/1. I’m wondering why the sorting is not resolved as a restful URL like /movies/sort/title.

And when do we create restful URLs and when to use parameterized URLs?

Answer 1

REST (as used by Rails) operates on resources. Specifically it uses the HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to operate on resources.

Assume you had a movie model. You might have a movies resource which would define the following routes:

GET '/movies' - Gets a list of movies
GET '/movies/new' - Gets the form to create a new movie
POST '/movies' - Creates a new movie
GET '/movies/:id' - Gets the details about the movie with :id
GET '/movies/:id/edit' - Edits the movie with :id
DELETE '/movies/:id' - Deletes the movie with :id
PUT '/movies/:id' - Updates the movie with :id

Sorting on the other hand is a way of providing rails with additional information regarding the request. So, if you’re going to be doing the CRUD actions on a model or a resource you should be using RESTful routing (as described by the railsguide) but otherwise you may want a parameter, or you could consider sorting your data client side using javascript!

Note that there isn’t anything stopping you from implementing a route like '/movies/sort/title' it just isn’t a RESTful route and requires custom routes in your routes.rb file. Just read the railsguide I linked above for the complete story.