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I'm working on a flight tracking application in Ruby (1.9.3) on Rails (3.2.11). This application has a Flight class, which has, among other things, a string column tail_number to track the tail number of the airplane that performed the flight.

I'm attempting to create an index view for the tail number, showing a listing of the tail numbers and the count of each, and linking to a view which will show all Flights which have that tail number. I have the show page working, but I'm having trouble making link_to work on the index page.

The show view is handled by the flights controller's show_tail action, which I've set up in routes.rb:

match '/tails' => 'flights#index_tails'
match '/tails/:tail_number' => 'flights#show_tail'

The flight controller groups the flights by tail number and provides a count:

def index_tails
  @flight_tail_numbers = Flight.where("tail_number IS NOT NULL").group("tail_number").count
end

On my tail number index page (/app/views/flights/index_tails.html.erb), I create a table of tail numbers and the count of each, intending to have the tail number link to the appropriate show view:

<h1>Tail Numbers</h1>

<table>
<% @flight_tail_numbers.each do |tail_number, count| %>
  <tr>
    <td><%= link_to(tail_number, tails_path(tail_number)) %></td>
    <td><%= count %>
  </tr>
<% end %>
</table>

However, instead of the link_to creating a link to /tails/tail_number (for example, /tails/N909EV) like I'm hoping, it instead creates a link to /tails.tail_number (/tails.N909EV). This link clearly does not send me to the flights#show_tail that I'm wanting.

I've successfully created indexes for other models that are associated with Flight (Airports, Trips) and and index for Flight itself, and they all work by using, for example, the link_to trip.name, trip_path(trip) syntax I'm trying to use for tail numbers. So this would be pretty trivial if Tail_Number were a model and I can treat it the same way, but it seems far too trivial to be a model versus just an attribute of a given flight.

I'm assuming the reason it's not working for me is that when I'm using trip_path(trip), trip is an object whereas in tails_path(tail_number), tail_number is a string. But I'm not sure exactly how I should link to it. I've tried solutions like the named routes in Rails link_to action with URL parameters, but I get the same undefined method problem if I do that, so I reverted back to what's listed above.

How should I format my link_to to make this work?

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bogardpd
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1 Answers1

2

Since the action :show_tail isn't a RESTful action you'll need to assign it in an :as statement.

You can change your route to support what you're trying:

match '/tails/:tail_number' => 'flights#show_tail', :as => :tails

Which will allow it to match tails_path

I'd probably name it something like 

match '/tails/:tail_number' => 'flights#show_tail', :as => :show_tails

and use show_tails_path(tail_number) to avoid issues with other actions.

Richard Brown
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  • That worked perfectly, thank you. For some reason, I'd tried renaming the route and linking to that, but never thought to add `_path` to it. – bogardpd Mar 08 '13 at 04:24