Errors creating a button to delete an active record

Question

Having trouble deleting an active record for my model of workers.

Workers has a belongs_to relationship with Users

My routes

workers_update PUT    /workers/update(.:format)                  workers#update
user_workers POST   /users/:user_id/workers(.:format)          workers#create
new_user_worker GET    /users/:user_id/workers/new(.:format)      workers#new
edit_user_worker GET    /users/:user_id/workers/:id/edit(.:format) workers#edit
user_worker GET    /users/:user_id/workers/:id(.:format)      workers#show
             DELETE /users/:user_id/workers/:id(.:format)      workers#destroy

My worker controller destroy method

    def destroy
     @worker.destroy
     redirect_to(current_user) 
   end

The button I'm trying to create which is on the worker show page

<% if current_user?(@worker.user) %>
   <%= button_to "Delete", @worker, method: :delete, data: {confirm: "Are you sure you  want to delete this worker?"}%>
<%end%>

The error I get when I try and load the page

 NoMethodError in Workers#show

 Showing /home/elliot/rails_projects/EJWmining_app/mining_app/app/views/workers/show.html.erb where line #10 raised:

 undefined method `worker_path' for #<#<Class:0x00000002b841e0>:0x00000003e5e338>

 Extracted source (around line #10):

 9: <% if current_user?(@worker.user) %>
 10:     <%= button_to "Delete", @worker, method: :delete, data: {confirm: "Are you sure you want to delete this worker?"}%>
 11: <%end%>

Not sure why I am getting this error. it says no method error in Workers#show it should be calling Workers#destroy. Bonus points we can add my bootstrap button class to this button

class: "btn btn-small bit-danger"

Answer 1

The reason this is happening is that when you use an instance variable like @worker somewhere that url_to (inside of link_to or button_to, among others) will process it will assume routes based on the classname.

In this case your class is Worker. Since @worker is a Worker it is trying to use worker_path, but you don't actually have that route defined. For a simple resource, routes would look like this:

new_worker   GET   /workers/new(.:format)       workers#new
edit_worker  GET  /workers/:id/edit(.:format)   workers#edit
worker       GET  /workers/:id(.:format)        workers#show
             PUT    /workers/:id(.:format)      workers#update
             DELETE  /workers/:id(.:format)     workers#destroy

So a DELETE on worker_path would be what you want. However since you have some more complicated routes going you actually want user_worker_path.

You could use this like:

<%= button_to "Delete", user_worker_path(@user, @worker), method: :delete, ... %>

More information:

• Nested Resources
• Deleting a nested resource

To add the class you can include it in the button_to code directly:

<%= button_to "Delete", path_method, method: 'delete', class: 'myclass' %>

Hope this helps!