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ruby-on-railsrestful-authenticationlogout

Add a logout button in RESTFUL authentication

I've installed RESTFUL authentication and everything seems to be working fine. i can signup and login. the only way i can logout is by typing in the URL http://localhost:3000/logout

how do i add a logout button on a page? i tried adding one to the members.rhtml

<%= link_to "logout", :controller=> "sessions", :action=> "destroy" %>

which references the session_controller.rb but i get an error "No action responded to show. Actions: create, destroy, and new"

any thoughts? thanx

Solution

  • What do you have in your routes file?

    Try putting

    map.log_out 'logout', :controller => 'sessions', :action => 'destroy'

    in your routes.

    Then just have 

    <%= link_to "Sign out", log_out_url %>

    for the sign out link.

    EDIT

    Its all down to how you specify the routing.

    Because you had the map.log_out in the routing, then the url http://localhost:3000/logout url is picked up by this and routed to the correct action.

    If you have :

    <%= link_to "logout", :controller=> "sessions", :action=> "destroy" %>

    This will just generate a link for you of http://localhost:3000/session. But, it does nothing to the routing. You still need to specify the correct routes.

    Note that Rails does not append the destroy action to the url. (It will not create http://localhost:3000/session/destroy.) It assumes that if you have an action of destroy that you will be sending it with a DELETE http verb. For some reason, its not quite perfect and it doesnt actually also default to sending the DELETE verb.

    You can force it to do this :

    <%= link_to "logout", {:controller=> "user_sessions", :action=> "destroy"}, :method => :delete%>

    This will still not work unless you also route it correctly. If you put the following into the routes :

    map.resource :session

    Then rails will generate the routing for all the verbs and specify the default actions for them, including DELETE. More information can be found here : Rails Routing from the Outside In.

    That whole page is worth reading over and over until you really understand it. Routing is key to understanding Rails!

    For a simple controller like Sessions, it is easier just to specify the log_out route and then link to log_out_url..

    (Hope that makes sense, sleep deprivation is creeping in!)