The url_for method cannot find the route

Question

I have to make edit/create forms for several tables on one page (settings). Therefore I have created SettingsController.

Routes:

resources :settings, :only => :index do
  member do
    get 'cs_edit'
    put 'cs_update'
    post 'cs_create'
    delete 'cs_destroy'
  end
end

The controller:

class SettingsController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :authenticate
...
def cs_create
  @cs = CaseStatus.find(params[:id])
  @cs.save

  redirect_to settings_path, :notice => 'Case Status was created successfully'
end

The view part:

<%= form_for(@cs, :url => url_for(:action => 'cs_create', :controller => 'settings'), :class => 'status_form') do |cs_f| %>

The question is that I am getting the following error:

Showing /home/michael/public_html/development/fbtracker/app/views/settings/index.html.erb where line #98 raised:

No route matches {:action=>"cs_create", :controller=>"settings"}
Extracted source (around line #98):

95:                   <% end %>
96:                 </table>
97: 
98:                 <%= form_for(@cs, :url => url_for(:action => 'cs_create', :controller => 'settings'), :class => 'status_form') do |cs_f| %>
99:                   <%= cs_f.text_field :name, :class => 'sname' %>
100:                  <%= cs_f.text_field :owt, :class => 'owt' %>
101:                  <%= cs_f.submit 'Add' %>

Also I just have checked routes:

$ rake routes
...
cs_edit_setting GET    /settings/:id/cs_edit(.:format)             {:action=>"cs_edit", :controller=>"settings"}
cs_update_setting PUT    /settings/:id/cs_update(.:format)           {:action=>"cs_update", :controller=>"settings"}
cs_create_setting POST   /settings/:id/cs_create(.:format)           {:action=>"cs_create", :controller=>"settings"}
cs_destroy_setting DELETE /settings/:id/cs_destroy(.:format)          {:action=>"cs_destroy", :controller=>"settings"}
settings GET    /settings(.:format)                         {:action=>"index", :controller=>"settings"}

As you can see, the route matches {:action=>"cs_create", :controller=>"settings"} is exist. But url_for cannot find this route. Why?

Answer 1

You have defined cs_create as a member method, but your url_for call doesn't give it an object. If you really want to use url_for this way, you can do this:

url_for(:id => @cs.id, :action => 'cs_create', :controller => 'settings')

Or alternatively make it a collection method:

resources :settings, :only => :index do
  post 'cs_create', :on => :collection
  member do
    get 'cs_edit'
    put 'cs_update'
    delete 'cs_destroy'
  end
end

However, as mentioned in the comments, this is basically ignoring all of the support that rails provides to make this easy. I'd recommend:

• define a resources routing for CaseStatus that can use all the standard RESTful routes (that doesn't mean you can't make all these settings visible on a single page under /settings
• use standard url helpers instead of url_for
• understand that you don't need a separate path for all the HTTP actions (e.g. show, update and delete are usually share all the same path, but with different HTTP actions)