Question

I’m trying to destroy links that belong to a category model (through my browser). I can successfully delete a link that has an id of 1 and category_id of 1, but when I try to delete a link that has any other id I get hit with:

ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound in LinksController#destroy
Couldn't find Link with id=1 [WHERE "links"."category_id" = 1]

Very frustrating, because I’m not trying to delete a link that has an id of 1! But I see in the request parameters that it’s always trying to delete a link with "category_id"=>"1",
"id"=>"1"}, no matter what link I click on. Looking at the links in my development database confirms they exist and have ids that are not 1…

Here’s the code for LinksController#destroy:

class LinksController < ApplicationController

def destroy
    @category = Category.find(params[:id])
    @link = @category.links.find(params[:id])
    @link.destroy
    redirect_to category_url(@category)
end

Here’s the code for the view where I’m trying to delete these pesky links:

<h1><%= @category.category %></h1>
<p><%=  @category.description %></p> 
<ul>
    <% @category.links.each do |link| %>
    <li>
    <%= link_to link.title, link.url %> |
    <%= link_to "delete", category_link_path(@category), :method => :delete %>
    </li>
 <% end %>

Edit: Added parameters

{"_method"=>"delete",
 "authenticity_token"=>"[removed]",
 "category_id"=>"1",
 "id"=>"1"}

Edit: Added config/routes.rb:

LinkManager::Application.routes.draw do

  resources :categories do
    resources :links, only: [:create, :destroy]
  end

  root :to => 'categories#index'

What am I overlooking? Is there anything I can try?

Answer 1

Your call to category_link_path is ommitting something. Perhaps it should look like this?

<%= link_to "delete", category_link_path(@category, link), :method => :delete %>

It looks like you’re fulfilling the category_id part of the route by passing in @category, but you also need to provide link as the id.

Then you need to fix your destroy action as such:

def destroy
  @category = Category.find(params[:category_id])
  @link = @category.links.find(params[:id])
  @link.destroy
  redirect_to category_url(@category)
end