Rails: Custom nested controller actions

controller-action, custom-action, nested-routes, ruby-on-rails

Solution

There are a couple of problems: routing to the `accept` action and building a URL to a nested resource.

Defining custom actions

You can add custom actions to your RESTful resources using this syntax:

resources :requests do
  get 'accept', :on => :member
end

This will give you a route that looks like this:

requests/:id/accept

And you can generate paths in your views using:

accept_request_path(a_request)

The `:on => :member` part indicates that you're routing to a new action on each individual request, rather than the collection of all requests. If you used `:on => :collection` the route would be `requests/accept`

Nesting resources

When you nest resources:

resources :companies do
  resources :requests do
    get 'accept', :on => :member
  end
end

You get routes that look like this, note that because the requests is nested inside companies the route includes both a `company_id` and an `id`:

companies/:company_id/requests/:id/accept

And helpers like this:

accept_company_request_path(a_company, a_request)

You could do this long-hand, as you're currently trying to do, with something like:

<%= link_to "Accept",
        :controller => "requests", :action => "accept",
        :id => request.id, :company_id => request.company.id %>

But it's easier to use the helpers:

<%= link_to "Accept", accept_company_request_path(request.company, request) %>

Appropriate verbs

Accept sounds a lot like something that updates your database in some way, and if that's the case you should consider using a `PUT` request rather than a `GET` request.

The HTTP/1.1 spec says that the convention has been established that the GET and HEAD methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval (RFC2616, section 9) which has the real-world implication that non-human web clients — search engine indexers, browser extensions, etc. — are allowed to follow links (which make `GET` requests) but not allowed to submit forms that make other types of requests.

If you do switch to using a `PUT` request then the `button_to` helper will come in handy. As with `link_to` you can pass the controller, action, method, and all the parameters required by the route to `button_to`:

<%= button_to 'Accept',
      {:controller => :requests, :action => :accept,
       :company_id => request.company, :id => request},
      :method => :put %>

Or you can use the helpers to generate the path which is much easier:

<%= button_to 'Accept',
      accept_company_request_path(request.company, request),
      :method => :put %>

More documentation

- Adding more RESTful actions

- Nested resources

Problem

I want to setup a custom nested controller actions but I can't figure out the routing. I keep getting the following error ``` No route matches [GET] "/assets" ``` routes.rb ``` resources :companies do resources :requests do match :accept end end ``` index.html.rb ``` <% @requests.each do |request| %> <ul class="users"> <li> <%= full_name(request.profile) %> <%= request.status %> <%= link_to "Accept", :controller => "requests", :action => "accept", :id => request.id %> </li> </ul> <% end %> ```

Original source