Put a link in a flash[:notice]

Question

I am learning Ruby and Rails.

I have a Ruby on Rails project that tracks jobs a server is running. Right now, when I manually create a new job, it announces:

flash[:notice] = "Created job job number #{update.id}."

I would like to turn the #{update.id} into a link to the job on the job list.

The URL for going to the job is jobs/list?job=1234 where 1234 is the update.id that is displayed in the flash notice.

Is it possible to put a link into a flash[:notice] statement? Or do I need to re-work how this message is being displayed in order to turn it into a link?

If you've tried all the methods below and it's *still* not working... You need to mark the message as safe (with `html_safe`) when you render it, not when you store the message! — Dennis, Feb 26 '16 at 15:06

score 42 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 04 '11 at 17:46

42

Don't forget to add .html_safe at the end of the notice, if you're using Rails3. So it would say flash[:notice] = "Your message".html_safe

answered Apr 04 '11 at 17:46

Kirill

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+1 I'm not using Rails3 for this project, but thanks for the info. – David Oneill Apr 04 '11 at 19:06
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Sorry to be a kill joy, but this is a comment to a answer, not really a real answer. – Ian Vaughan Dec 11 '13 at 10:00

Dorian · Answer 2 · 2017-10-23T06:06:01.313

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The @template instance variable is no longer available in Rails 3.

Instead you can use this in your controller:

flash[:notice] = "Successfully created #{view_context.link_to('product', @product)}.".html_safe

Hope this helps :)

edited Oct 23 '17 at 06:06

answered Jul 07 '11 at 11:33

Dorian

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This is great thanks - surely it's better to use link_to instead of typing out the HTML in a string! Also I think you still have to do Kirill's .html_safe at the end. – jackocnr Nov 16 '12 at 16:17
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@user664833 you still need `.html_safe` at the end in Rails 4, just tried it out. – tirdadc Jul 07 '14 at 01:02
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Works in Rails 5.0, but you must be `.html_safe` in the flash notice in the actual view in ADDITION to putting it in the controller. – the12 Jun 27 '17 at 04:27

Emily · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-24T19:22:35.163

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I may be missing something obvious, but you should just be able to do

flash[:notice] = %Q[Created job number <a href="/jobs/list?job=#{update.id}">#{update.id}</a>]

and then just make sure you're not escaping the content of the flash when you display it in your view.

edited Aug 24 '12 at 19:22

answered Feb 12 '10 at 03:18

Emily

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You can avoid unsightly backslash escape using `%Q[]` or other equivalent delimiters `()[]{}<>` to denote a string: `%Q[Created job number #{update.id}]` – fny Jul 29 '12 at 05:26
According to [this guy](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rubyonrails-core/z52zgDgUmbs) this will not work in rails 4.1. I haven't been able to get it working either. – kingsfoil Oct 23 '14 at 22:00
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Got it working in Rails 4.1 here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26538891/flash-message-with-html-safe-from-the-controller-in-rails-4 – kingsfoil Nov 11 '14 at 21:41

score 16 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 12 '10 at 15:08

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As nas commented, link_to is not available from your controller unless you include the appropriate helper module, but url_for is. Therefore I'd do pretty much what Emily said except use url_for instead of hardcoding a URL.

e.g. if a job were defined as a resource in your routes:

link = "<a href=\"#{url_for(update)}\">#{update.id}</a>"    
flash[:notice] = "Created job number #{link}"

answered Feb 12 '10 at 15:08

mikej

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When I do this I get text that says instead of a hyperlink. – jcollum Dec 01 '11 at 00:51
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@jcollum Am guessing you're using Rails 3.x where HTML is escaped by default so you need to either use the `raw` method e.g. `<%=raw(flash[:notice])%>` in your view or mark the message as `html_safe` as given in [Kirill's answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/5542265/63034). – mikej Dec 01 '11 at 10:50
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yes, I tried putting #{thing.html_safe} but learned that you have to put the html_safe at the end of the whole string, not in the #{} subst. – jcollum Dec 01 '11 at 15:39
@jcollum That's right. If you put a safe string as a substring inside a non-safe string then the resulting string is non-safe (which is what you'd expect). So it is the whole message that must be marked as safe to prevent your HTML being escaped. – mikej Dec 01 '11 at 17:13
ActionController url_for is deprecated or moved on the latest stable version. – Sean M May 30 '13 at 17:00

score 9 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

The selected answer didn't work for me. But the answer from this post worked. I'm using Rails 4.2.4 by the way. With guidance from the answer I linked, here's how I did it:

View

<% flash.each do |name, msg| %>
  <div class="alert alert-<%= name %>">
    <button type="button" class="close" data-dismiss="alert" aria-label="Close"><span aria-hidden="true">&times;</span></button>
    <div id="flash_<%= name %>"><%= sanitize(msg) %></div>
  </div>
<% end %>

Controller

flash[:success] = "Blah blah. #{view_context.link_to('Click this link', '/url/here')}"

The magic is the sanitize method.

I didn't need to use .html_safe as well.

I think this is the relevant answer for Rails 5 as well. – Josien Jun 06 '18 at 15:07 — Josien, Jun 06 '18 at 15:07

Giuseppe · Answer 6 · 2019-08-11T05:47:22.593

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Building on Dorian's answer, here's an internationalized flash with a link in it:

flash[:notice] = t('success', go: view_context.link_to(t('product'), @product)).html_safe

Where your translation (e.g. a YAML file) might contain:

en:
  success: "Successfully created a %{go}"
  product: "product"
it:
  success: "%{go} creato con successo"
  product: "Prodotto"

edited Aug 11 '19 at 05:47

answered Mar 30 '15 at 15:09

Giuseppe

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score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 12 '10 at 13:25

You can use an alias in your controller to the link_to function, or the RailsCast recipe:

"Created job job number #{@template.link_to update.id, 
  :controller => 'jobs', :action => 'list', :job => update.id}."

http://railscasts.com/episodes/132-helpers-outside-views

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 12 '10 at 05:05

1

You can always use the Rails link_to helper:

flash[:notice] = "Created job job number #{link_to update.id, :controller => 'jobs', :action => 'list', :job => update.id}."

answered Feb 12 '10 at 05:05

mattwindwer

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I dont think link_to is going to work in controller unless you include the helper modules in your controller but then that will be polluting namespace. – nas Feb 12 '10 at 06:39

Put a link in a flash[:notice]

8 Answers8

View

Controller

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