Rails3 button_to is calling POST action, trying to call PUT action

Question

I have a button_to that I want to perform a PUT action (there is only one thing that can be updated about this resource - it will be updated as being 'acknowledged', so there are no other form fields associated with firing the action).

This is in my view (the controller is given explicitly because the button is on a view that belongs to another controller):

<%= button_to "Acknowledged", :controller => 'practice_sessions', :id => @practice_session.id, :method => :put %>

In my routes file, the resource has been declared as a restful resource:

  resources :practice_sessions

The controller for this resource has a create and an update action, and the button_to above calls the create action. I want it to call the update action.

This comes through the log right before the create action fires:

Started POST "/practice_sessions?id=21&method=put" for 127.0.0.1 at 2010-11-17 08:52:46 +0000
  Processing by PracticeSessionsController#create as HTML
  Parameters: {"authenticity_token"=>"1EW0IlI38d0f4wST5azrCEZVZPfih7i0UvCGSF7eqbc=", "id"=>"21", "method"=>"put"}

Answer 1

Your syntax is slightly off. button_to takes three arguments: the button title, an options hash, and an html_options hash. :method=>:put needs to go in html_options, while the route parameters need to go in options. So you can rewrite like so:

<%= button_to "Acknowledged", { :controller => 'practice_sessions',
  :id => @practice_session.id}, 
  :method => :put %>

When clicked the request should be handled by PracticeSessionsController#update

Answer 2

In the end I decided to go with the more restful approach using named routes, which seems to work fine. I'm still not 100% sure why the other method wouldn't work, but I don't think it matters because this seems both a) more tidy and b) more conventional.

<%= button_to "Acknowledge", practice_session_path(@practice_session), :method => :put %>

Answer 3

You might need to explicitly pass the :method => :put argument in the html_options hash - it might be getting globbed into the options hash.

Try this:

<%= button_to "Acknowledged", { :controller => 'practice_sessions', :id => @practice_session.id }, :method => :put %>

(Note the explicit braces around :controller and :id)