Ruby on Rails forms: missing template on submit

Question

My controller has two methods: index and search.

def index: renders the default view, index.html.erb, and displays a default map using YM4R/GM.

def search: renders the default view using render index, but uses form input to display a custom map using YM4R/GM.

The view, index.html.erb, contains a partial view, _form.html.erb, and the @map.div for YM4R/GM.

The map displays fine when rendered through the default, but when submitted to the search method I get the error:
Template is missing. Missing template ym4r/gm_plugin/variables/_variable.erb in view path app/views.

What's weird is that I had this working yesterday until I started jacking around with trying to make my form submit using form_remote_tag. I started getting this error with that type of call so now I've changed everything back (I think), but I'm still getting the error. I think there's something I don't understand about how Rails renders views.

Answer 1

As you've pointed out here, there's an important difference between a method and a string.

# Call the index method, then render the result, whatever that is. Does not work as
# expected.
render(:action => index)

# Render using the index template
render(:action => 'index')

Ruby is really relaxed when it comes to calling methods so there's no requirement to use brackets as is the case with others such as JavaScript or Perl.