ruby-on-railsactiveresourcelink-to-function

Rails: Specifing params without value to link_to

Supposing the route

map.resources :articles

how do you get this

/articles?most_popular

using link_to method?

tried the following:

link_to articles_path(:most_popular) # exception
link_to articles_path(:most_popular => nil) # /articles
link_to articles_path(:most_popular => true) # /articles?most_popular=true

note: i'm using inherited_resources with has_scope

Solution

  • If you don't add a value to the parameters you will not be respecting the W3C standard, which mandates that the params section has the form field=value.

    I recommend that you add a new :most_popular action to your articles controller instead.

    On your routes.rb:

    map.resources :articles, :collection => {:most_popular=>:get}

    On your controller:

    class ArticlesController < ApplicationController
...
def most_popular
  @articles = ...
end

    On your views:

    link_to most_popular_articles_path() # /articles/most_popular

    This will be HTML-compliant, your urls will look practically the same (changing one ? by one /) and your controller will be simplified (you will have the most_popular action separated from the index).

    Regards!

    Update (2017): It appears that the W3C standard doesn't mandate the field=value syntax (or doesn't mandate it any more). However some servers are documented to "choke" on queries not complying with this syntax. See Is a url query parameter valid if it has no value? for details.