Problems with routing a Rails form_for

Question

I have a form that I am using to try and update a field on a 'thing', However, I'm getting massive problems that is probably down to something stupid.

My code is as follows:

<% form_for :thing, :url => { :action => "update" } do |f| %>
    <%= f.collection_select :status_id, Thing.statuses, :first, :last %>
    <%= f.submit 'Submit' %>
<% end %>

This looks correct to me (@thing does exist BTW), however, when I submit I get

Unknown action
No action responded to 145

etc etc etc. The URL is http://localhost:3000/things/145. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I sort of despise ActionView so I'm always rusty when it comes to it, but try

<% form_for :thing, :url => 
     url_for(:action => "update", :id => @thing) do |f| %>

I'm sure someone else can come up with something DRYer and cleaner.

Answer 2

Using RESTful routes, the update action is triggered when a put request is recognized. You probably just need to specify the method as an html option:

form_for :thing, :url => { :action => "update" }, :html => { :method => 'put' } do |f|

Answer 3

If you were using RESTful routing (and I'm assuming you are) you could just do this:

<% form_for @thing do |f| %>
  <%= f.collection_select :status_id, Thing.statuses, :first, :last %>
  <%= f.submit 'Submit' %>
<% end %>

And this will point to the correct action depending on if @thing is a new_record? or not.