What's the bracket in user_path (user) for?

Question

I wish to know what's the (user) for. I am having trouble understanding rails routing system.

Is user_path(@user) the same as user_path(user) ?

Answer 1

That is the arguments you give to the user_path method when you call it. Since the path generated is something like /user/25 the object user points to is used to get that ID number.

@user is an instance variable, usually set in the controller (Rails copies these into the View before rendering the Erb template), whereas user is either a local variable or a method call, perhaps given as explicit local variable in the render call or defined as a method in your ApplicationHelper module.