# Problem with route.rb file

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [September 22, 2008, 9:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175 "2008-09-22T09:01:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 9:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175/1 "2008-09-22T09:01:27Z")

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I’m relative novice at RoR and I’ve just built my first application w/  
o a tutorial that allows a user to login, buy products, and read/  
create reviews about the product.

So the basic structure is like this…there is a layout page which  
basically uses \<% yield %\> to show the product listings and the review  
listings (listings/index and listings/review). This works fine.

The problem is making the login page(sessions/new) redirect tot he  
listings/index page. So when submit is clicked to submit username and  
password, a method called create is called and it can either redirect  
back to the login( in the case that the username/pw is invalid) or  
redirect to the “listings/index”. In my config/routes.rb i’ve set the  
“map.resources :listings” and used redirect\_to new\_listings\_path and  
redirect\_to new\_session\_path+’?loginError=1’ for the redirects. Both  
cases worked fine. However, now the review link on the index page  
which redirects to the review page no longer works

This is the error I am getting

Unknown action

No action responded to show

Now that I think about it don’t see how the application was working at  
all since the lisitings wasn’t defined in the resources to begin  
with. Anyone care to give insight or have any online references that  
better explain the routes.rb file? Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks

Jon

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 1:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175/2 "2008-09-22T13:49:32Z")

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Hey Jon,  
The default route  
map.connect ‘:controller/:action/:id’  
was taking care of recognizing your route when you started off. It  
would recognize ‘listings/review’ to be for the controller ‘listings’  
and the action ‘review’.

The thing is that now you have declared the RESTful routes for the  
resources ‘listings’:  
map.resources :listings  
One of these routes is ‘listings/:id’ which will call the method  
‘show’ for the listing ‘id’. You can see all your declared routes  
using ‘rake routes’ in the command line.

Now if you need to add a method to the standard list of REST methods,  
like ‘review’, you do the following:  
map.resources :listings, :collection =\> { :review =\> :get }  
This supposes that your review action works on the collection of  
listings (not on a specific listing) and is being called with the  
method ‘get’.

If you need a method to act on a specific ‘listing’, you need to pass  
the id of the listing in your call, so you declare the method this  
way:  
map.resources :listings, :member =\> { :review =\> :get }

Note that if your action makes a database change, you should use the  
methods PUT or POST instead.

Good luck.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 4:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175/3 "2008-09-22T16:38:01Z")

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Wow, I just added the change to my route file and it worked perfectly.  
Thanks!

I’m not familiar with the term RESTful route, by the way you describe  
it, it seems that it means the “default” route though.

So from your explanation, my question is this, since map.connect  
‘:controller/:action/:id’ is the equivalent of  
map.resources :listings , why is it that when I added the latter, my  
review page didn’t work, but when I only had map.connect  
‘:controller/:action/:id’, it worked?

Also, i did “rake routes” before adding the collection route and  
without. When done with the collection route I saw all “listings”/\*  
appear. W/o there was none. I guess this is the same question, but if  
controller/:action/:id covers that, wouldn’t the listings be listed?

Actually…i guess what would be the most helpful is a clear cut  
definition of map.connect ‘:controller/:action/:id’ . Example, if my  
controller is listings and i have an action “add\_item”, is listings/  
add\_item automatically added to the resources?

Thanks

Jon

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 6:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175/4 "2008-09-22T18:15:48Z")

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Also…

I’m not sure if this is a related issue, but I just put in a ‘login’  
link that simply redirects to another file.

\<%= link\_to “Login!”, :action =\> :login\_redirect %\>. In my controller  
I have

def login\_redirect  
redirect\_to new\_session\_path  
end

I know the link can be accomplished by \<%= link\_to “Login!”, ‘…/  
session/new’ %\>,  
but I am curious as to why the controller method is not working. I  
tried creating a “login\_redirect.html.erb”(it should never get called  
since we’re using  
a redirect). My “new\_session\_path” is defined in the route.rb file  
properly ( map.resource :session , as there can only be one session at  
a time). I also thought about adding  
map.resources :listings, :collection =\> { :login\_redirect=\> :get },  
but that would’t make sense since “login\_redirect” is not an object,  
and likewise there is no parameter being passed in that pathway.

Jon

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 10:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175/5 "2008-09-23T10:06:33Z")

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Jon,  
map.resources :listings is not equivalent to  
‘:controller/:action/:id’.

map.resources :listings will make ‘Listing’ a RESTful resource. This  
means it can be accessed as a resource with the most common CRUD  
(Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations. So map.resources :listings  
just creates the specific routes for accessing a controller ‘listings’  
with default actions ‘index’, ‘show’, ‘edit’, ‘update’, ‘new’,  
‘create’ and ‘delete’. Only those methods are resolved. These are the  
standard methods you get when you make a scaffold.

If your controller doesn’t have these actions, you’re better off just  
defining  
map.connect ‘:controller/:action/:id’. This will resolve any URL of  
that form and try to find the corresponding controller and action.

So with that defined (and not map.resources :listings), any URL of the  
form ‘listings/some\_action’ will resolve to your controller ‘listings’  
and try to find an action ‘some\_action’.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 10:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175/6 "2008-09-23T10:52:20Z")

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Ok, sorry, just noticed you already knew that 🙂

The route map.listings :collection =\> { :login\_redirect =\> :get }  
should work just fine, though you’re right that semantically it’s not  
right.

The point is when you define Listing to be a resource, you actually  
should only handle actions on that resource in your controller. An  
action like login\_redirect is not an action on the resource ‘listings’  
and has therefore nothing to do in you controller ‘listings’. Put this  
kind of actions in another controller or, as mentioned before remove  
it entirely as it’s useless.

As example of an action you would put in your controller ‘listings’:  
an action ‘list\_recent’ that would find recent listings is typically  
one to put in the :collection option.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 4:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175/7 "2008-09-23T16:11:55Z")

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Thanks for the insight, haven’t tried it yet, but I’m sure it’ll be  
interesting.

Any suggestions in regards to good references to learn about resources  
in  
general?

Thanks

Jon

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [September 24, 2008, 2:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175/8 "2008-09-24T14:41:46Z")

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The book ‘The Rails Way’ by Obie F. (Addison Wesley) has a  
couple of very comprehensive chapters about routing in Rails in  
general and a specific chapter about RESTful routing (chapters 3-5).

For a general intro in REST just look at the Wikipedia entry:

> **[Representational state transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer)**
>
> Representational state transfer (REST) is a software architectural style that was created to guide the design and development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of an Internet-scale distributed hypermedia system, such as the Web, should behave. The REST architectural style emphasises the scalability of interactions between components, uniform interfaces, independent deployment of components, and the creation of a layered architec...

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 10:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problem-with-route-rb-file/149175/9 "2008-09-23T10:49:59Z")

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Why do you define an action just to redirect? In your view, you can  
just call  
\<%= link\_to “Login!”, :url =\> new\_session\_path %\>  
which will directly get you to the action you want.