form_tag action not working in rails

Question

I have this form in my application.html.erb.

<%= form_tag(:action=>"index", :controller=>"posts") %>
  <p>
  // code here
  </p>

I dont understand why is this getting directed to posts->create instead of posts->index?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Basically, Rails observes and obeys "RESTful" web service architecture. With REST and Rails, there are seven different ways to interact with a server regarding a resource. With your current code, specifying the form's action as index doesn't make sense: Rails' form helpers can either POST, PUT or DELETE.

If you wanted to create a post, then redirect to the index, you can do so in the applicable controller action:

class PostsController < ApplicationController
...

def create
  @post = Post.new

  respond_to do |format|
  if @post.save
    format.html { redirect_to(:action => 'index') }
end
end

While your form would look like:

<% form_for @post do |f| %>
  # put whatever fields necessary to create the post here
<% end %>