I was having some problems with custom actions in my controllers for
RESTful resources. For instance, in my controller I have the following:
class VotersController < ApplicationController
def mark_duplicates
blah
end
end
...and in my routes.rb I have:
map.resources :voters
This doesn't work, when I navigate to /voters/mark_duplicates I get a
"cannot find voter with id=mark_duplicates". Same with other actions
"mark_household" and "set_filters" - obviously a conflict with the
RESTful routes.
So, after some research I have changed my route definition to this:
And now those actions work just fine. I just don't understand why and
I'm not sure if this is right or if there is anything else that I'm
triggering with this code.
Methods added to an resource with :collection generate routes that
don't need any id to be executed. You can use those for methods that
affect not just one specific voter, but for the voter-population as a
whole. Methods added with :member need an id to be routed correctly,
as they operate on a particular voter.
Two good practices: use the helpers that are generated with the
resources (new_voter_path for example: <%= link_to 'new',
new_voter_path %>) and use "rake routes" in your console (in the root
of your rails app) to see a list of all the generated routes. you can
also see clearly then what those manually added methods do to your
routes.
