Dan Smith wrote:
I have used a scaffold to create a user model and controller with the
default values (new, edit, destroy etc). However, I have added a new
view and action to the controller called 'login', but when I type in the
url 'users/login', it tries to find a user whose id='login'.
How can I get around this? Thanks.
This suggests that you are using Rails 2.x and scaffolding has changed a
little. Before version 2, the default was to generate routing for
"controller/action" type URLs, but from version 2 the default is to
generate RESTful URLs.
To see how URLs get mapped, run the following from your application top
directory:
rake routes
You'll see a line of the form:
user GET /users/:id {:controller=>"users", :action=>"show"}
This is matched by the URL "/users/login" so this is why you are being
sent to the "show" action and it is looking for a user with an id of
"login".
These REST URLs are produced by the following line in your
config/routes.rb file:
map.resources :users
There are 2 things you can do. To get the style of URLs prior to
version 2, comment out this line in the routes.rb file and restart the
server. To keep RESTful routes, update the resources line to specify
your new action. Actions that work on a specific ID are added with a
:member argument, so:
map.resources :users, :member => { :my_action => :get }
means that your application will now accept URLs of the form
/users/:id/my_action (the "rake routes" command will show this change to
the routes). Alternatively, if the action doesn't require a specific
ID, then use the :collection argument:
map.resources :users, :collection => { :my_action => :get }
This means you can access the URL /users/my_action and reach your
action. You can change :get to :post if the action must only apply to
POST requests. Other possibilities are :put, :delete and :any. You can
add both :member and :collection actions if you need to.
Have a look at #resources in the documentation:
http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/Resources.html#M000308
Also search this forum for posts on routes and resources as there have
been many posts on the topic. There are also many websites with
information about the new scaffolding mechanisms.
