Getting a complete URL from Rails

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello,

I'm sending out an e-mail message to new users of my service. I want to send a particular link in this e-mail but I can't figure out how to get a complete URL from the url_for method. Is there a way to do this without manually setting the host name?

Thank you, -- Miles

2

I did, what I have in my mail template is this...

<%= url_for :controller => "friend", :action=>"confirm_email",:only_path=> false %>

The error I get is this...

Missing host to link to! Please provide :host parameter or set default_url_options[:host]

I can pass in the host name, but then when I deploy my production environment I'll have to remember to go in and change it. I'm looking around now to see if there's a way to set it just once (maybe in the environment file).

If there's a way Rails can just figure it out, though, that would be ideal. Are there global variables I can access, maybe, that I could use to build out the beginning of the URL (the host name and the application's path)?

-- Miles

3

wouldn't request.host work as the host parameter? http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionController/AbstractRequest.html#M000251

4

If the problem is that your mailer isn't running as a "request", then why don't you set a variable in your config/environments/development.rb (and perhaps also in your production.rb) to get the host where you need it.

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn http://agileconsultingllc.com Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com

5

Hi,

Missing host to link to! Please provide :host parameter or set default_url_options[:host]

I can pass in the host name, but then when I deploy my production
environment I'll have to remember to go in and change it. I'm looking
around now to see if there's a way to set it just once (maybe in the
environment file).

I had the same problem as you. In the mailer you cannot get the host, because mailer is something belonging to a model, so it’s out of the request/response cycle because of design (that’s the way to go with MVC).

You are right that you need to pass the host parameter to your mailer, but in some cases you won’t need to put it on the configuration file. If the mailer gets called from a controller (as a result of one action of the user, for example) then you can just use “#{request.protocol}#{request.host_with_port}” and you’ll get the url for the root of your application.

Unfortunately, if you are going to invoke the mailer from a cron or a task, then there’s no request and you should stick to the configuration constant solution.

Regards,

javier ramirez

6

Yes, the code that sens the mail message in an Mailer object, it's outside the request/response cycle so it's request object is always nil. I was thinking about putting this information in the environment somewhere, but then I'd have to change it at deployment time and that would be kind of a drag.

Passing the request object to the Mailer from the calling Controller is a good idea! :slight_smile: I hadn't thought of that, that will solve this problem, I think.

Thank you, -- Miles

7

Maybe this....

Write URLs from arbitrary places in your codebase, such as your mailers.

Example:

  class MyMailer     include ActionController::UrlWriter     default_url_options[:host] = 'www.basecamphq.com'

    def signup_url(token)       url_for(:controller => 'signup', action => 'index', :token => token)     end end