How do I link to the create function in my controller in Ruby on Rails?

Question

I've got this line in my routes.db file:

map.resources :things

I'm trying to create a link that will create a new thing. So far I've got

<%= link_to "add thing", things_path (:thingName => key)%>

But I'm getting this error message:

Unknown action
No action responded to index. Actions: create and new

How do I do the link_to line so that it links to the create method instead of the index method? Thanks for reading.

Answer 1

Do you want to link to the new or the create action? The new action is: <%= link_to "add thing", new_thing_path %> The create action would not make sense here, since you don't have any data to inject into the new object? Unless I'm missing something...

Answer 2

You probably dont want to create a resource through a link like that. Links are HTTP GET requests, which can be cached, and search engines will follow that link, resulting in database records being created incorrectly. You should only use HTTP POST requests to create a resource. To do that you need a form. If you already know the data to pass, you can use hidden_field to pass additional data

<% form_for Thing.new(:thing_name => key ) do |f| %>
   <%= f.hidden_field :thing_name %>
   <%= f.submit %>
<% end %>