Question

I’m using Rails 2.3.8

I’m having an issue with the actions that get rendered after an error in a form.

So I have a posts controller and the regular related actions, index, new, create, edit, update, and show.

Here are the actions with forms in PostsController:

def new
  @post = Post.new
  # other setup
end

def create
  if request.post?
    @post= Post.new(params[:post])
    # other setup for save
    if @post.save
      flash[:notice] = 'Post was successfully created.'
      redirect_to campaign_path(@post, :redirect => "create")
    else
      render :action => 'new'
    end
  end 
end

def edit
  @post = Post.find(params[:id])
  # other setup
end


def update
  # setup for save
  if @campaign.update_attributes(params[:post])
    flash[:notice] = 'Your post was successfully updated.'
    redirect_to :action=> "index"
  else
    render :action => "edit"
  end
end

And here are the forms in the views

new.html.erb:

<% form_for(@post, :html => {:multipart => true}) do |f| %>
  <%= f.error_messages %>
  # Form fields and stuff
  <%= f.submit "Create New Post" %>
<% end %>

edit.html.erb:

<% form_for(@post, :html => {:multipart => true}) do |f| %>
  <%= f.error_messages %>
  # Form fields and stuff
  <%= f.submit "Update This Post" %>
<% end %>

My problem is: If I’m on the new page and I make some error (e.g. leave a field empty), the views that render submit to the wrong place. So if I start out on new and submit unsuccessfully a bunch of times, it takes me successively through new, then create, then edit, then update actions. So the behavior is:

Start out creating a post:

Action: new
URI: /posts/new
View rendered: new
Successful submit goes to: show
Unsuccessful submit goes to: create

After first unsuccessful submit:

Action: create
URI: /posts bad?
View rendered: new
Successful submit goes to: index (this means the form is submitting to the update action, bad)
Unsuccessful submit goes to: edit bad

After second unsuccessful submit:

Action: edit bad, I shouldn’t be able to get here from new!
URI: /posts/[id]
View rendered: edit bad, I shouldn’t be able to get here from new!
Successful submit goes to: index through update
Unsuccessful submit goes to: update

After third and subsequent unsuccessful submits:

Action: update bad, I shouldn’t be able to get here from new!
URI: /posts/[id]
View rendered: edit bad, I shouldn’t be able to get here from new!
Successful submit goes to: index
Unsuccessful submit goes to: update

I’d appreciate if anyone can point me to what I’m doing wrong. If you need any additional information just ask.

Thanks so much!

Answer 1

The problem is probably the code that you are using to create your post (# setup for save). You are probably setting @post.id which is causing your new form to submit to update instead of create. The form_for helper checks if a record is new or not, if it is new then it submits to create, if it already exists it submits to update.

Note: You also don’t need to check request.post? on your create action. The create action should always be a post request.