Button invokes "update" instead of "index"

Rails
1

I have nested resources

resources :dicts do
resources :cards
end

and in my form

form_for [@dict,@card] do |f|

I have the following button:

<%= f.submit(‘LIST ALL’, url: dict_cards_path(@dict.id),
class:‘kanren_button’, name:‘list_all’, method: :get) %>

The generated HTML code is:

I would expect that clicking this button would call Card.index, but I
get instead the error message

The action ‘update’ could not be found for CardsController

It is correct that I don’t have a CardsController.update yet, but I
don’t think I should need one at this point.

The output from ‘rake routes|grep card’ looks fine for me:

dict_cards GET    /dicts/:dict_id/cards(.:format)

cards#index
POST /dicts/:dict_id/cards(.:format)
cards#create
new_dict_card GET /dicts/:dict_id/cards/new(.:format) cards#new
edit_dict_card GET /dicts/:dict_id/cards/:id/edit(.:format)
cards#edit
dict_card GET /dicts/:dict_id/cards/:id(.:format)
cards#show
PATCH /dicts/:dict_id/cards/:id(.:format)
cards#update
PUT /dicts/:dict_id/cards/:id(.:format)
cards#update
DELETE /dicts/:dict_id/cards/:id(.:format)
cards#destroy

What did I do wrong?

2

On Wednesday, June 18, 2014 7:31:03 AM UTC-4, Ruby-Forum.com User wrote:

I would expect that clicking this button would call Card.index, but I
cards#index
cards#update
DELETE /dicts/:dict_id/cards/:id(.:format)
cards#destroy

What did I do wrong?

–
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

The method and url parameters you have in the submit helper that show up
in
the output are going to be ignored, they aren’t valid parameters for
submit. Those items are actually defined above in the html form tag
(which
is generated from your form_for statement). My guess is that if you
look
at the log, this is coming across with an action of PATCH or PUT.

3

On Jun 19, 2014, at 2:09 AM, Ronald F. wrote:

Does this mean that I can’t solve this with a button, but would have
to use a link instead?

It’s important to note that you may style a link to look like anything
– even a button. But you cannot remove the button-ness from an actual
button and have it do anything besides submit the form containing it.

Walter

4

Does this mean that I can’t solve this with a button, but would have
to use a link instead?

5

Walter D. wrote in post #1150186:

On Jun 19, 2014, at 2:09 AM, Ronald F. wrote:

Does this mean that I can’t solve this with a button, but would have
to use a link instead?

It’s important to note that you may style a link to look like anything
– even a button. But you cannot remove the button-ness from an actual
button and have it do anything besides submit the form containing it.

I see. Maybe I’m using the wrong design here in the first place. Here is
what I am going to do:

The user arrives the web page in question, from an overview page. The
overview page gives a list of all instances (in this case, of type
Card), by listing only the primary key of the instance. When the user
clicks on one of those keys, s/he arrives at a page displaying all the
data for this Card instance.

At this point, I will give the user three choices:

  • delete the Card
  • edit the Card
  • show again the “list of all cards”

My (probably stupid) idea was to write a “form” without input fields,
showing only the information on the cards, and having 3 buttons for
DELETE, EDIT and LIST.

Now I understand that a submit button in a form helper for a form_for,
which has as argument an existing object, automatically calls the
“update” function. Thinking about it, this makes sense, and I now think
that I was misusing the form_for().

Maybe I should just output the data without using a form at all, and use
button_to() if I want the clickable part look or behave like buttons, or
use links and style them as buttons, as you pointed out. In any case,
using a form in my particular case, doesn’t make much sense. Would you
agree on that?

6

On Wednesday, 18 June 2014 06:31:03 UTC-5, Ruby-Forum.com User wrote:

URL + method are properties of the “form” tag, not of the submit button.
This will not work.

A better question: what is this button supposed to do? It appears to
be
on a form that’s editing a particular card…

–Matt J.

7

On Jun 19, 2014, at 7:29 AM, Ronald F. wrote:

I see. Maybe I’m using the wrong design here in the first place. Here is

  • delete the Card
    that I was misusing the form_for().

Maybe I should just output the data without using a form at all, and use
button_to() if I want the clickable part look or behave like buttons, or
use links and style them as buttons, as you pointed out. In any case,
using a form in my particular case, doesn’t make much sense. Would you
agree on that?

I think you would get a lot of mileage out of reading the REST article
in Rails Guides. Particularly try to absorb how Rails does its own
flavor of REST routing. To delete an object, you send a DELETE (header)
request, which Rails simulates as a POST with a method: ‘_delete’ hidden
field, since most browsers don’t properly support that request type. If
you were to hand-make a form with such a method within it, wrapped
around your delete button, then it would just work. But if you put that
button inside a regular form_for @your_object, then the form will have
either the POST (new object) or PUT/PATCH (existing object being
updated) path and header, and the delete will fail.

Walter