HELP: sends my id as my action

Rails
1

i’m having a routing problem with my UPDATE action. I’ve pasted my
CATEGORIES controller and view below. I ran scaffold for categories
and i consolidated everything into a single view so that I could show
list, create new, edit, destroy all from a single page. my create,
destroy actions work and my index view works as expected. my UPDATE
action however returns the following:

Processing CategoriesController#16 (for 127.0.0.1 at 2008-09-08
13:08:22) [POST]
Session ID: c05797629988686fd3951de29fca7e24
Parameters: {“commit”=>“Update”,
“category”=>{“name”=>“Entertainment”, “description”=>“Latest gossip
about your favourite stars12”, “short_name”=>“entertainment”},
“authenticity_token”=>“b6a61d7dc0890d83a923366cd5c93e672b16f62e”,
“action”=>“16”, “controller”=>“categories”}

and it identifies the object id as my action and redirects me to /
categories/:id. it should redirect me to simply /categories with a
flash notice saying my object has been updated. i should also note
that it also doesn’t save the updated entry to my database.

I’m running rails 2.1 and I haven’t changed my default routes in
routes.rb

Thanks for your help.

HERE’S MY CONTROLLER
class CategoriesController < ApplicationController

layout ‘staff’

#verify :method => :post, :only => [ :destroy, :create, :update ],
#:redirect_to => { :action => :list }

GET /categories

GET /categories.xml

def index
list
render :action => ‘list’
end

def list
@categories = Category.find(:all)
@category = Category.find(params[:id]) if params[:id]
@category = Category.new if @category.nil?

#respond_to do |format|
  #format.html # index.html.erb
  #format.xml  { render :xml => @categories }
#end

end

POST /categories

POST /categories.xml

def create
@category = Category.new(params[:category])

respond_to do |format|
  if @category.save
    flash[:notice] = 'Category was successfully created.'
    format.html { redirect_to categories_url }
    format.xml  { render :xml => @category, :status

=> :created, :location => @category }
else
format.html { render categories_url }
format.xml { render :xml => @category.errors, :status
=> :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end

PUT /categories/1

PUT /categories/1.xml

def update
@category = Category.find(params[:id])

respond_to do |format|
  if @category.update_attributes(params[:category])
    flash[:notice] = 'Category was successfully updated.'
    format.html { redirect_to categories_url }
    format.xml  { render :xml => @category, :status

=> :created, :location => @category }
else
format.html { render categories_url }
format.xml { render :xml => @category.errors, :status
=> :unprocessable_entity }
end
end
end

DELETE /categories/1

DELETE /categories/1.xml

def destroy
@category = Category.find(params[:id])
@category.destroy

respond_to do |format|
  flash[:notice] = 'Category was successfully removed.'
  format.html { redirect_to categories_url }
  format.xml  { head :ok }
end

end

end

HERE’S MY VIEW --> categories/list.html.erb
<% @page_title = ‘Categories’ -%>

<%= content_tag(‘p’, link_to(’« Back to Menu’, :controller =>
‘staff’, :action => ‘menu’)) %>

<% for category in @categories -%>

'> <% end %>
Name Short Name Description
<%= h(category.name) -%> <%= h(category.short_name) -%> <%= h(category.description) -%> <%= link_to('Edit', :action => 'list', :id => category) -%> <%= link_to('Delete', {:action => 'destroy', :id => category}, :confirm => 'Are you sure you want to remove this category?', :method => :delete) -%>

<%= link_to('New Category', categories_url) %>

<% form_tag(params[:id].blank? ? {:action => ‘create’} : {:action =>
‘update’, :id => @category}) do -%>
<%= error_messages_for ‘category’ -%>

Name Short Name Description
<%= text_field(:category, :name, :size => 20) -%> <%= text_field(:category, :short_name, :size => 20) -%> <%= text_field(:category, :description, :size => 40) -%> <%= submit_tag(params[:id].blank? ? 'Create' : 'Update') -%>
<% end %>
2

What does your routes.rb look like? Does it have
map.resources :categories in it?

For the create/update form try:

<% form_for @category do |c| %>
<%= error_messages_for ‘category’ -%>

    <table>
            <tr>
                    <th>Name</th>
                    etc...
            </tr>
            <tr>
                    <td><%= c.text_field :name %></td>
                     etc...
                    <td><%= submit_tag 'save' %></

td>


<% end %>

3

hey. thanks for the reply.

my routes.rb does contain: map.resources :categories.

i’m not sure how i would use a form_for in place of the form_tag.

if you look at my form_tag line of code, it reads:

<%# form_tag(params[:id].blank? ? {:action => ‘create’} : {:controller
=> ‘categories’, :action => ‘update’, :id => @category}) do -%>

I use a ternary operator to execute either the ‘create’ action or the
‘update’ action depending on whether or not params or passed. The
idea is that if the params are blank, the form is to create a new
category and thus the fields will be blank. If the params exist, the
form is to update an existing category and thus the fields will be
populated with the current params. the same goes for my submit_tag
code which i’ve also applied a ternary operator with the same idea in
mind:

<%= submit_tag(params[:id].blank? ? 'Create' : 'Update') -%>

again, when i click the ‘update’ button, it redirects me to
http://localhost:3000/users/:id and sends the :id as the action.

thanks,

4

chris wrote:

Parameters: {“commit”=>“Update”,
“category”=>{“name”=>“Entertainment”, “description”=>“Latest gossip
about your favourite stars12”, “short_name”=>“entertainment”},
“authenticity_token”=>“b6a61d7dc0890d83a923366cd5c93e672b16f62e”,
“action”=>“16”, “controller”=>“categories”}

Chris,
update under REST should be a PUT request, and if you compare html
resultant from the scaffolding code for new.html.erb and edit.html.erb,
you’ll find that edit contains the following after the tag:

I suspect if you add that in somehow programmatically, your problems
will be solved. :wink:

Cheers,
Darrik

5

Hey i took your advice and took a closer look at the code scaffold
generates for my NEW & EDIT views and it seems that form_for takes the
same argument for edit and new which is the object itself, in this
case @category.

I used the form_for and it worked. can you explain again why it
works? that would be really helpful.

thanks,

6

chris wrote:

Hey i took your advice and took a closer look at the code scaffold
generates for my NEW & EDIT views and it seems that form_for takes the
same argument for edit and new which is the object itself, in this
case @category.

I used the form_for and it worked. can you explain again why it
works? that would be really helpful.

thanks,

Perhaps this will illustrate.

@old_user = User.find :first
=> #<User id: 1, …>

@old_user.new_record?
=> nil

@new_user = User.new
=> #<User id: nil, …>

@new_user.new_record?
=> true

form_for() takes the same parameters, but it isn’t passed the same
object for a new record as opposed to an edit of a previously existing
record, and therefore it doesn’t generate the same html. I haven’t
looked two closely, but the big difference I noticed was that form_for()
generates the input element with the name “_method” and value “put” when
new_record? is nil. The target for the form will be the same for both,
and the only difference between them as requests go will be that the
update request will use the PUT method whereas the create request will
use the POST method. If you look in your controller, you’ll see that
prior to the create method is this:

POST /enquiries

and prior to the update method is this:

PUT /enquiries/1

The target for the form should be “/enquiries” and in rails this is
given by form_for :enquiry.

When rails inspects the request to determine the route, it will use the
id from the form and the method to come to the conclusion that the
target of the update request is PUT /enqueries/:id and the target for
the create request is POST /enquiries.

Hope that makes sense.

Cheers,
Darrik