Learning Rails – Routing

Starting the second course, Rapid Prototyping with Ruby on Rails, over at the Tealeaf Academy, I’m starting to learn how to work with Rails.

One of the subjects in this lesson of study material is Rails’s Routing documentation.

In the Rails Routing guide the 7 different routes are explained that are automatically created when specifying a plural resource in routes.rb.

For example, resources :objects:

• Collection actions
  • ObjectsController#index
    HTTP: GET
    Path: /objects  –> objects_path
  • ObjectsController#new
    HTTP: GET
    Path: /objects/new –> new_object_path
  • ObjectsController#create
    HTTP: POST
    Path: /objects
• Member actions
  • ObjectsController#show
    HTTP: GET
    Path: /objects/:id –> object_path(:id)
  • ObjectsController#edit
    HTTP: GET
    Path: /objects/:id/edit –> edit_object_path(:id)
  • ObjectsController#update
    HTTP: PATCH / PUT
    Path: /objects/:id
  • ObjectsController#destroy
    HTTP: DELETE
    Path: /objects/:id

As you’re going to encounter these very often, it’s important to remember them!

If you specify a singular resource, the index route is not available. The other routes basically only work without an id:

• Member actions
  • ObjectsController#new
    HTTP: GET
    Path: /object/new –> new_object_path
  • ObjectsController#create
    HTTP: POST
    Path: /object
  • ObjectsController#show
    HTTP: GET
    Path: /object –> object_path
  • ObjectsController#edit
    HTTP: GET
    Path: /objects/edit –> edit_object_path
  • ObjectsController#update
    HTTP: PATCH / PUT
    Path: /object
  • ObjectsController#destroy
    HTTP: DELETE
    Path: /object

The possibilities of Rails routing are plentiful. Head over to the guide Rails Routing from the Outside In to continue reading.