Need some help understanding partials, versus authentication..

Hi,

I am using Rick Olson's restful_authentication plugin, using activefx's great tutorial (http://www.railsforum.com/viewtopic.php? id=14216) which works well but I am trying to understand how to use partial to modify the workings a bit.

What I want to do is rather than have the user click on a link to get to a logjn screen, have the username/password/submit form/controls to be on the home page.

What I did was break the login form out into a partial "/app/views/ session/_login_form.html.erb) like so:

<% form_tag session_path do %>   <div id="UserInfoBox">     <% if logged_in? %>       Logged in as:       <%= link_to h(current_user.login.capitalize), user_path(current_user) %>       <%= link_to 'Edit Profile', edit_user_path(current_user) %> &nbsp;       <%= link_to 'Change Password', change_password_path %> &nbsp;       <%= link_to 'Log Out', logout_url %>     <% else %>       <label for="login">Username</label>       <%= text_field_tag 'login' %>       <label for="password">Password</label>       <%= password_field_tag 'password' %> &nbsp;       <%= submit_tag 'Log in' %>       <label for="remember_me">Remember me:</label>       <%= check_box_tag 'remember_me' %>       <span class="userinfobox-links">         &nbsp <%= link_to 'Sign Up', new_user_path %>         &nbsp; &nbsp; <%= link_to 'Forgot Password?', forgot_password_path %>       </span>     <% end %>   <% end %> </div>

I'm using an application template to allow me to have a common style, etc for all my pages; the conditional code here shows the login form items if you're not logged in; if you are logged in it shows your user name a a couple of links to edit your profit, change your password, etc. It's in controllers/views/layout/application.html.erb .

On this common template, I call the partial like this:

        <%= render :partial => "/sessions/login_form", :locals =>{:login => "login", :password =>"password" } %>

Everything shows up ok, but when I click the login button, I get sent to the old login template (i.e., the one you'd get to if you went to http://localhost:3001/session/new ) which of course, since I am using am app template, shows up on the body area of the template.. and the user isn't logged in.

Is there something basic I am not getting about how to use a partial to get a user logged in this way..?

Any advice would be appreciated!

_David