Routing with RESTful Design for Rails

Interaction with Router in Ruby on Rails

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

REST is an architectural style that is used in Rails by default. RESTful design helps to create default routes (by using resources keyword) in the config/routes.rb file, as given below,

config/routes.rb
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  resources :homes
end

Now this will create following routes by default as,

$ rake routes
Prefix    Verb    URI Pattern          Controller#Action
homes     GET     /homes(.:format)      homes#index
          POST    /homes(.:format)      homes#create
home      GET     /homes/:id(.:format)  homes#show
          PATCH   /homes/:id(.:format)  homes#update
          PUT     /homes/:id(.:format)  homes#update
          DELETE  /homes/:id(.:format)  homes#destroy
new_home  GET     /homes/new(.:format)  homes#new
edit_home GET     /homes/edit(.:format) homes#edit

Resources vs Resource

Similar to the resources, another option that we have is to go for ‘resource’ instead of ‘resources’. The term ‘resource’ will work same as ‘resources’ except the condition that it won’t create ‘index’ action.

config/routes.rb
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  resource :homes
end

Get back to the terminal,

$ rake routes
Prefix    Verb   URI Pattern           Controller#Action
homes     GET    /homes(.:format)      homes#show
          PATCH  /homes(.:format)      homes#update
          PUT    /homes(.:format)      homes#update
          DELETE /homes(.:format)      homes#destroy
          POST   /homes(.:format)      homes#create
new_home  GET    /homes/new(.:format)  homes#new
edit_home GET    /homes/edit(.:format) homes#edit

The point to be noted is that when resource without (s) is used, it will force the route to go for plural controller even if it is defined as singular, URL remains singular.

config/routes.rb
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  resource :home
end

At terminal end,

$ rake routes
Prefix    Verb    URI Pattern          Controller#Action
home      GET     /home(.:format)      homes#show
          PATCH   /home(.:format)      homes#update
          PUT     /home(.:format)      homes#update
          DELETE  /home(.:format)      homes#destroy
          POST    /home(.:format)      homes#create
new_home  GET     /home/new(.:format)  home#new
edit_home GET     /home/edit(.:format) home#edit

But this won’t be the same in case of resources with (s). As resources with (s) followed by singular route name will look for singular name controller.

config/routes.rb
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  resources :home
end

At terminal end,

$ rake routes
Prefix      Verb    URI Pattern          Controller#Action
home_index  GET     /home(.:format)      home#index
            POST    /home(.:format)      home#create
home        GET     /home/:id(.:format)  home#show
            PATCH   /home/:id(.:format)  home#update
            PUT     /home/:id(.:format)  home#update
            DELETE  /home/:id(.:format)  home#destroy
new_home    GET     /home/new(.:format)  home#new
edit_home   GET     /home/edit(.:format) home#edit

Yeah, so important point to note is to always have a keen eye on singular and plural naming convention in not only while defining routes but throughout in Rails framework.

Reference

• Understanding Rails Routes and RESTful Design
• Rails Routing from the Outside In