How do I create a view that is aware of full route. (Rails 3)

Question

How can I design my view such that it "remembers" its route? So that "Back" on /team/1/members/1 links to /team/1/members and /members/1 links back to /members?

I have models of team and member. Teams have many members.

My routes allow me to view all member or members on a team.

  resources :teams do
    resources :members
  end
  resources :members do
    resources :member_parts
  end

I've currently tried to keep the route consistent. But doing so I seem to have to repeat myself a lot and add many bits of logic to the view. (this just seems wrong)

excerpt from app/views/members/show.html.erb

<%= link_to 'Edit', params[:team_id].nil? ? edit_member_path(@member) : edit_team_member_path(@member.team,@member) %> |
<%= link_to 'Back', params[:team_id].nil? ? members_path : team_members_path(@member.team) %>

Answer 1

A quick hack, not tested in Rails3, you may have to adapt it:

In application_controller.rb

before_filter :store_location

def store_location
  session[:return_to] = request.fullpath
end

def redirect_back_or_default(default=root_path, flash=nil)
  session[:return_to] ||= default
  redirect_to(session[:return_to], flash)
  session[:return_to] = nil
end

In your routes

match '/back' => 'application#redirect_back_or_default'

In your views

<%= link_to 'Back', '/back' %>

You can also use this redirect_back_or_default method in your actions…

Answer 2

Updated Updated the code, the problem was that, the method couldn't recognized the path because I provided only an id instead of a class.

Use polymorphic paths.

The edit link:

Generate your path array

paths = []
paths << @member.team if params[:team_id]
paths << @member
polymorphic_path(paths,:action=>:edit)

paths2 = []
paths2 << @member.team if params[:team_id]
paths2 << :members
polymorphic_path(paths2)

For more information please see the Rails api

Hope this will be a good start point.

Answer 3

You can take a look on urligecne in resource_controller plugin and on it's url helpers. It allows you to use object_path or collection_path and it returns path according to present url, so it just do what you want.

You can also add this dirty and ugly solution:

# application helper
def collection_path
  request.request_uri.gsub(/\/[\d]+[\/]*$/, "")
end

It should remove strings like "/2/" or "/14" or "/" from the end of your url. However I feel very week when it comes to use regexp, so be careful with this.

You can use this helper in view:

<%= link_to "Back", collection_path %>

Also to generate edit path, you can just add "edit" string at the end of current url. You can create edit_object_path helper for this:

def edit_object_path
  request.request_uri.chop('/') + "/edit"
end 

But again it is quite dirty solution and you should be careful.

EDIT: As I look at @dombesz answer, it probably is what you are looking for!