What's the correct way to complete a Rails create action?

Question

I have a User.create action that provisionally registers a new user and sends an email with a generated password. What is the most Rails-like way to complete that action? I want to do everything exactly right from now on. No more nonsense. This time I'm serious.

I'm thinking these are the options...

1. Create a view called login_email_sent.html.haml and render it. (It would have a message like "thanks, an email has been sent with your login.")

2. Create a view called create.html.haml and let Rails render that by default.

3. Redirect the user to the same page as the form they just submitted with a message in the flash.

Or something else...?

Answer 1

This is more of a user experience question.

Leave the create action as something that just creates and has no output (or just a simple 201 Created header if created by an API call). Do a redirect_to to either:

1. A thanks page telling them how to wait and what will happen next
2. The homepage with a very visible flash message letting them know what just happened.

In 99.9% of cases you shouldn't ever need a template for create.

def create
  User.create(...)
  respond_to do |format|
    format.html { redirect_to signup_complete_url }
    format.xml  { render :head => :created }
  end
end

For instance.