Inspecting Routes in a Rails application 🧐

In this quick blog I would be showing you a few different ways and command to inspects routes within a Ruby on Rails Applications.

What's a Route, You might ask ?

• Well, a Rails App come build in with a routing system that allow it to check the URLs of the request being made and then take an action that I should take to respond to that request. We can specify rules that the router will follow as configuration on a file under the config/routes.rb inside the app directory.

• Here an examples Routes file.
  

Rails.application.routes.draw do
    # the priority is based upon order of creation: first created -> highest priority.
    # For details on the DSL available within this file, see https://guides.rubyonrails.org/routing.html
    # Root route
    root 'sessions#home'
    # Custom routes here above the default resourceful routes
    get '/signup', to: 'users#new', as: 'signup'

    post '/signup', to: 'users#create'

    get '/login', to: 'sessions#new', as: 'login'

    post '/login', to: 'sessions#create'

    delete '/logout', to: 'sessions#destroy', as: :logout

    # OAuth2 OmniAuth callbacks routes
    # Using math to avoid conflicts with other routes that may be using the same callback URL

    match '/auth/:provider/callback', to: 'sessions#create', via: [:get, :post]

    # Include Nested resources ( show or Index ) and ( new ): Make sure These routes forms can display validations errors.
    resources :bookmarks do
    resource :tags, only: [:index, :new]
    end
        resources :tags

        resources :users, only: [:show] do

        resources :bookmarks, only: [:index]
end

Command to View Routes

• The most basic way to view the rout would be to use the rails routes command in the terminal => rails routes or bin/rails routes.

                 Prefix Verb      URI Pattern                                        Controller#Action
                    root GET      /                                                  sessions#home
                  signup GET      /signup(.:format)                                  users#new
                         POST     /signup(.:format)                                  users#create
                   login GET      /login(.:format)                                   sessions#new
                         POST     /login(.:format)                                   sessions#create
                  logout DELETE   /logout(.:format)                                  sessions#destroy
                         GET|POST /auth/:provider/callback(.:format)                 sessions#create
       new_bookmark_tags GET      /bookmarks/:bookmark_id/tags/new(.:format)         tags#new
               bookmarks GET      /bookmarks(.:format)                               bookmarks#index
                         POST     /bookmarks(.:format)                               bookmarks#create
            new_bookmark GET      /bookmarks/new(.:format)                           bookmarks#new
           edit_bookmark GET      /bookmarks/:id/edit(.:format)                      bookmarks#edit
                bookmark GET      /bookmarks/:id(.:format)                           bookmarks#show
                         PATCH    /bookmarks/:id(.:format)                           bookmarks#update
                         PUT      /bookmarks/:id(.:format)                           bookmarks#update
                         DELETE   /bookmarks/:id(.:format)                           bookmarks#destroy
                    tags GET      /tags(.:format)                                    tags#index
                         POST     /tags(.:format)                                    tags#create
                 new_tag GET      /tags/new(.:format)                                tags#new
                edit_tag GET      /tags/:id/edit(.:format)                           tags#edit
                     tag GET      /tags/:id(.:format)                                tags#show
                         PATCH    /tags/:id(.:format)                                tags#update
                         PUT      /tags/:id(.:format)                                tags#update
                         DELETE   /tags/:id(.:format)                                tags#destroy
          user_bookmarks GET      /users/:user_id/bookmarks(.:format)                bookmarks#index
                    user GET      /users/:id(.:format)                               users#show

• Another Flag you can use after the rails route command is --expanded so like rails route --expanded output:

--[ Route 1 ]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prefix            | root
Verb              | GET
URI               | /
Controller#Action | sessions#home
--[ Route 2 ]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prefix            | signup
Verb              | GET
URI               | /signup(.:format)
Controller#Action | users#new
--[ Route 3 ]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prefix            |
Verb              | POST
URI               | /signup(.:format)
Controller#Action | users#create
--[ Route 4 ]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prefix            | login
Verb              | GET
URI               | /login(.:format)
Controller#Action | sessions#new
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• According to the Rails Documentations, you can search through the routes with the greg option: -g.

• Examples from rails docs of the command:
  

bin/rails routes -g new_comment
bin/rails routes -g POST
bin/rails routes -g admin

• Another options is to use the option: -c to filter out the output to a specific controller.

• Another examples from rails docs of the command:
  

bin/rails routes -c users
bin/rails routes -c admin/users
bin/rails routes -c Comments
bin/rails routes -c Articles::CommentsController

• Note: This is a Quick blog written to improve my Technical writing skill after finding an amazing community of Dev and Technical Writer Called Inked-In Founded By the ⭐️ React Developer @Elixir_js go give him a follow.

• Feel Free to Follow me on Twitter as Well @eulis01 I be Tweeting later to the #100WordsADay #inkedIn Tags Thanks For Reading, See You Hacking around the Terminal.