Route Params

Learning Goals

Create a dynamic route
Use route parameters in the controller via the params hash

Setup

Fork and clone this repo, then run:

$ bundle install
$ rails db:migrate db:seed

This will download all the dependencies for our app and set up the database.

Video Walkthrough

Review

You already know how to create a static request, which is where you create a page that doesn't take any parameters and simply renders a view. For example: localhost:3000/cheeses. For Rails to process this request, the routes.rb file contains a route such as:

get '/cheeses', to: 'cheeses#index'

This is mapped to the cheeses controller and its index action, which renders an array of cheeses as JSON.

Dynamic Routes

Consider this scenario: We're building a frontend feature for displaying data about one individual cheese. It'd be nice to be able to request data about one individual cheese, instead of only being able to retrieve an array of all cheeses. Ideally, we'd use the ID of the cheese as part of the URL to identify which cheese we're gathering data about: localhost:3000/cheeses/3.

We could make separate routes for each cheese:

# config/routes.rb

get '/cheeses/1', to: "cheeses#first"
get '/cheeses/2', to: "cheeses#second"
get '/cheeses/3', to: "cheeses#third"

But that would quickly get ridiculous. You would have to modify your web server every time someone creates a new cheese! Enter dynamic routes:

# config/routes.rb

get '/cheeses/:id', to: 'cheeses#show'

A breakdown of the dynamic route process flow is below:

The routes.rb file takes in the request to localhost:3000/cheeses/3 and processes it like normal, except this time it also parses the 3 as a URL parameter and passes it to the CheesesController.
From that point, the controller action that you write will parse the 3 parameter and run a query on the Cheese model.
Once we have the correct Cheese instance, we can render a JSON response.

In review, what's the difference between static and dynamic routes?

Static routes have a fixed path. For example, the /cheeses path will always show a list of all cheeses.
Dynamic routes will render different data based on the parameters in the path. For example, when 3 is passed in as the parameter to the /cheeses/:id route, the app should render the data for the cheese with an ID of 3. When 222 is passed in, the app should render the data for the cheese with an ID of 222.

Code Implementation

In order to setup a dynamic request feature, we've got some tests already in place:

# spec/requests/cheeses_spec.rb

RSpec.describe 'Cheeses', type: :request do
  describe 'GET /cheeses/:id' do
    let!(:cheese) { Cheese.create!(name: "Cheddar", price: 3, is_best_seller: true) }

    it 'returns the cheese with the matching id' do
      get "/cheeses/#{cheese.id}"

      expect(response.body).to include_json({
        id: a_kind_of(Integer),
        name: 'Cheddar',
        price: 3,
        is_best_seller: true
      })
    end
  end
end

Running learn test gives us an expected error: ActionController::RoutingError: No route matches [GET] "/cheeses/1".

To correct this error, let's draw a route in config/routes.rb that maps to a show action in the CheesesController:

get '/cheeses/:id', to: 'cheeses#show'

You will notice something that's different from the static route. The /:id tells the routing system that this route can receive a parameter and that the parameter will be passed to the controller's show action. With this route in place, let's run our tests again.

You should see a new failure this time: AbstractController::ActionNotFound: The action 'show' could not be found for CheesesController.

This means that we need to create a corresponding show action in the CheesesController. Let's get this failure fixed by adding a show action to our controller:

# app/controllers/cheeses_controller.rb

class CheesesController < ApplicationController
  def index
    cheeses = Cheese.all
    render json: cheeses
  end

  def show
  end
end

Run the tests again. You'll see a new error: JSON::ParserError: unexpected token at ''. We're getting this error because we're not returning any JSON data from our controller action.

If you start the Rails server and navigate to /cheeses/1 or any other cheese record, the router will know what you're talking about so it won't return an error. However, it won't display the requested content because the controller still needs to be told what to do with the id.

The Params Hash

We first need to get the ID sent by the user through the dynamic URL. This variable is passed into the controller in a hash called params. Let's put a byebug inside our #show action:

# app/controllers/cheeses_controller.rb

def show
  byebug
end

Run the tests to drop into the debugger and take a look at the value of params. You should see this:

#<ActionController::Parameters {"controller"=>"cheeses", "action"=>"show", "id"=>"1"} permitted: false>

Since we named the route /cheeses/:id, the ID is the value of the :id key, stored in params[:id]. You can verify that by checking the value of params[:id] in byebug. So next we can set up our #show action to find and display the requested cheese:

# app/controllers/cheeses_controller.rb

def show
  cheese = Cheese.find(params[:id])
  render json: cheese
end

In the first line, our show action is running a database query on the Cheese model that will return a cheese with an ID that matches the route parameters. It will store this record in the cheese variable, which we can then use to render JSON data for that cheese object.

And with that, our test is passing, and you now know how to create dynamic routes in Rails! You should also be able to run rails s and visit localhost:3000/cheeses/1 to see the JSON data for one individual cheese.

The params hash will keep coming back throughout this phase, so make sure you feel comfortable with this concept. For instance: if we wanted a different key rather than :id in the params hash, what do you think would need to change? Experiment a bit with the code in the routes.rb file and the controller, and use byebug to test your assumptions!

Conclusion

Dynamic routes are helpful when we want to associate some data from the URL with a record from the database. To create a dynamic route, use the :param_name syntax as part of the route, such as get "/cheeses/:id", to: "cheeses#show".

The dynamic parts of the route will be available in the params hash in your controller, so when a request comes in for /cheeses/3, you can access the number 3 in your controller using params[:id], and then look up the associated record in the database.

Check For Understanding

Before you move on, make sure you can answer the following questions:

What do we mean when we say that a route is dynamic?
How do we tell Rails that a route can receive a parameter?
How do we retrieve the value of a parameter inside our controller?

Resources

Rails Routing

shady-mungai / phase-4-rails-route-params-readme