Editing an existing Idea

In this page, we will update the existing idea. It might happen that you didn’t like the description of particular idea, then in such case we perform edit or update.

Open url https://localhost:3000/ideas/1/edit in your browser and see what happens.

It is expected that you will get following error:

Routing Error

No route matches [GET] "/ideas/1/edit"
...

Now, you know we need to follow Route-Controller-Action-View pattern.

Let’s go ahead and add all the changes.

edit route

Add following in routes.rb i.e :edit and :update after :create:

Rails.application.routes.draw do

  root 'ideas#index'
  resources :ideas, only: [:index, :show, :new, :create, :edit, :update]

end

Check rails routes and you will get required routes for perform editing:

$ rails routes | grep idea
  ...
  edit_idea GET    /ideas/:id/edit(.:format)   ideas#edit
       idea GET    /ideas/:id(.:format)        ideas#show
            PATCH  /ideas/:id(.:format)        ideas#update
            PUT    /ideas/:id(.:format)        ideas#update
  ...

add edit and update controller actions

Add following methods in IdeasController below create method:

def edit
  @idea = Idea.find(params[:id])
end

def update
  @idea = Idea.find(params[:id])

  if @idea.update(idea_params)
    redirect_to @idea
  else
    render 'edit'
  end
end

create view

Create a new view with name edit.html.erb inside app/views/ideas/edit.html.erb with following content:

<h1>Edit Idea</h1>

 <%= form_with model: @idea, local: true do |form| %>
  <p>
    <%= form.label :title %><br>
    <%= form.text_field :title, placeholder: 'your idea title ...' %>
  </p>

  <p>
    <%= form.label :description %><br>
    <%= form.text_area :description, placeholder: 'your idea description ...' %>
  </p>

  <p>
    <%= form.submit %>
  </p>
<% end %>

You should be able to see following now after reloading the page with URL /ideas/1/edit:

Now, go ahead and update either title, description or both and submit the form.

You will be redirected to updated idea page on successful update operation (due to this line redirect_to @idea).

Few UX changes

Add following changes to app/views/ideas/index.html.erb file to add editing feature from Ideas index page:

<table>
  <tr>
    <th>Title</th>
    <th>Description</th>
    <th colspan="2">Actions</th>
  </tr>

  <% @ideas.each do |idea| %>
    <tr>
      <td><%= idea.title %></td>
      <td><%= idea.description %></td>
      <td><%= link_to 'Show', idea_path(idea) %></td>
      <td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_idea_path(idea) %></td>
    </tr>
  <% end %>
</table>

And, add following code in the edit.html.erb so one can cancel editing and return to index page:

<p>
  <%= link_to  "Cancel and return", ideas_path %>
</p>