Link and URL helpers in Ruby on Rails - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using Link and URL Helpers in Rails

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Rails web page for a bookstore. You want to add links to navigate between the home page, the books list, and a contact page.

🎯 Goal: Build a Rails view file that uses link and URL helpers to create navigation links for Home, Books, and Contact pages.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable with the page titles and their paths

Add a helper variable for the base URL

Use link_to helper to create links for each page

Use url_for helper to generate a URL for the contact page

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Web developers often need to create navigation menus and links dynamically in Rails applications using link and URL helpers.

💼 Career

Understanding Rails link and URL helpers is essential for building user-friendly navigation and routing in real-world Rails web projects.

1

Create a hash with page names and paths

Create a Ruby hash called pages with these exact entries: 'Home' => root_path, 'Books' => books_path, and 'Contact' => contact_path.

Ruby on Rails

# Create the pages hash with names and paths
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a Ruby hash with keys as page names and values as path helpers.

2

Add a base URL variable

Add a variable called base_url and set it to root_url.

Ruby on Rails

pages = { 'Home' => root_path, 'Books' => books_path, 'Contact' => contact_path }
# Add base_url variable here
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the root_url helper to get the full base URL.

3

Create links using link_to

Use link_to helper inside a loop to create links for each page in pages. Use name and path as loop variables.

Ruby on Rails

pages = { 'Home' => root_path, 'Books' => books_path, 'Contact' => contact_path }
base_url = root_url

# Use link_to inside a loop to create links
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use pages.each do |name, path| and inside the block call link_to name, path.

4

Generate a URL for Contact page using url_for

Use url_for helper to generate the full URL for the contact page and assign it to a variable called contact_full_url.

Ruby on Rails

pages = { 'Home' => root_path, 'Books' => books_path, 'Contact' => contact_path }
base_url = root_url

pages.each do |name, path|
  link_to name, path
end

# Generate full URL for Contact page
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use url_for(controller: 'pages', action: 'contact', only_path: false) to get the full URL.