How do I create a link to a specific Post object in a Rails view?

Question

I am new to rails so excuse any easy questions. I have developed a blog and I am doing some customization. Just curious, if I want to render a specific post on my index.html.erb page is that possible. For instance if I create a post, title: Cool Post and it has a post_id of 25 in the table, in my index page can I call that specific post to be rendered?

Answer 1

Its hard to say exactly how your system is setup, but the "correct" way to do it in Rails, is to do something like in the Controller for your page:

def index
   @post = Post.find(25)

   ... Your other code here ...
end

And in your index.html.erb you could output the post:

<h2><%= h(@post.title) %></h2>
<%= h(@post.body) %>

Of course I am completely guessing on the fields on your @post

Edit: If all you want to do is render the @post you will still will want to retrieve the post to render in the controller, but then you will want to use a partial and render it from the index.html.erb file:

1. Hypothetically, create a _post.html.erb file in your app/views/posts/ directory, and place whatever rendering code you want there (or abstract it from the existing app/views/posts/index.html.erb file. _Note: refer to the post in the partial using a local variable post not @post for greatest flexibility.

2. Then call it in your index.html.erb for like this:

   <%= render :partial => 'posts/post', :object => @post %>

This call assumes the index.html.erb file is not in the same directory as the _post.html.erb partial.

Answer 2

I think his question is about rendering/redirecting. You should do (as a last line in your controller)

render @post

or

redirect_to @post

First one to show a post, second one to show post after creation/update.

Answer 3

While dcneiner's solution is technically correct, the Rails way is not to hard code these things. Once the blog is operational you will have to modify the source directly to change this post. This is not advised.

I'm going to suggest you add an extra column to the Posts table to denote whether a Post should be permanently featured on the front page. This allows you to dynamically update your permanent posts with nothing more than a checkmark when you create it.

Eg:

class Post < ActiveRecord
  named_scope :featured, :conditions => {:featured => true},
   :order => "created_at DESC"
end

Post.featured will return your featured post for use on your front page, ordered newest to oldest.

If you only want one featured post at a time you can add the following to the Post model

  before_validation :highlander_clause

  def highlander_clause
    Post.featured.each{|p| p.update_attribute(:featured, false) if featured
  end