Define url helper in rails routes

Question

Haven't needed to use the rails 'url helpers' before, but I am trying to implement something like Rails: URL/path with parameters . I did not create any 'resources', but I was under the impression I could prepend the url_helper name in the routes like:

user_index_path GET 'users/index', to: 'users#index'

but this gives the error:

undefined method 'GET' for #<ActionDispatch::Routing::Mapper:0x00000007ABCDEF> Did you mean? gets gem

Since I haven't used them much, I'm also confused by the statement I read here, https://blog.arkency.com/all-the-ways-to-generate-routing-paths-in-rails/ , saying "Of course instead of _path sometimes you are going to need _url". Am I defining them wrong? Yes, I read https://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html , and saw the bit about '3.16 Direct routes', but this doesn't jive with the examples I've 'seen'.

Answer 1

You can name routes whatever you want

#inside your routes.rb file
get 'users/index', to: 'users#index', as: 'users_index'

(note the "get" undercase, what you see on the first link is the output of the command rake routes , not the line when you define them)

That route will give you 2 named routes to use: users_index_path and users_index_url (the latter includes protocol, host, and port).

Answer 2

I must admit the official Rails routing documentation is quite terse. In short, you can't prepend the path in your routes.rb file. Your line should instead read as follows:

get 'users/index', to: 'users#index'

If you now visit http://localhost:3000/rails/info/routes or type rails routes in your project folder's command prompt, you will see that this gives you the users_index_path helper (note the plural). If you wanted this to be the singular - as in your original question - add the "as" option:

get 'users/index',  to: 'users#index', as: 'user_index'

Then you can use user_index_path in your view templates.

Answer 3

You're defining the routes wrong.

Try something like this:

get 'users/index' => "users#index", as: :users

Then you will get a helper like this: users_path

But don't do that........

Are you confusing controller actions with routes? Nobody defines a route as 'index'. That's simply assumed.

What you really want will be something like this:

resources :users, :controller => "users", :only => [:index]

Then you can use users_path to get to a collection of users.

What it does:

• Defines restful routes for the users resource.
• tells you which controller to go to.
• tells you which controller actions are to apply (in this case only one). If you are adding more restful routes, then add them as well. Finally, if you are implementing the whole 9 yards, then simply remove the :only => [etc] bit.

Answer 4

I believe the simplest and most conventional thing to do would be:

get :users, to: 'users#index'

which gives you:

users GET    /users(.:format)    users#index

which you would then use as users_path .

If you want to go down the resources path (so to speak), then:

resources :users, only: [:index]

Which also gives you:

users GET    /users(.:format)    users#index

It is unconventional to have user_index_path since users_path implies by convention the index action for the UsersController .