Make Submit button use specific route

Question

Question? How do I get my form.submit button to use a specific route? Specifically, the user can fill out this form from any page, and it will submit to a desired controller.

ruby -v 2.3.0 rails 5.0

This form is a feedback form for users to submit feedback. The way it works is, a little icon is available to click so the user can fill out and submit this form from ANY page. The Problem is, unless the user is on the homepage (local/customers), for example, they're on post/13, the form tries to add its URL route on top of the example and I get a "no route matches" ...post/13/customers/questionaire.

This is my route.rb

        post 'customers/questionaire' => 'customers#questionaire'

This is the form view

     <%= form_for :anything, url: "customers/questionaire" ,multiple: 
    true do |form| %>


            <div><%= form.label :email, 'E-mail:' %>
              <%= form.text_field :email , placeholder: 'JohnDoe@yahoo.com' %>

            </div>

            <div><%= form.label :feedback, 'Type of feedback:' %>
              <%= form.text_field :feedback, placeholder: 'Problem, Bug, Idea...' %>
            </div>

            <div><%= form.label :notes, 'Notes: (Required)' %>
              <%= form.text_field :notes, class: 'notes', id: 'notes', placeholder: "Your Feedback" %>
            </div>

            <%= form.submit "Submit", class: "btn1", id: "button", disabled: true %>

      <% end %>

Answer 1

What matters is the action attribute of the form HTML element, or the formaction attribute of a button or input element.¹

In Rails it's defined like so:²

<%= form_tag("/search", method: "get") do %>
  <%= label_tag(:q, "Search for:") %>
  <%= text_field_tag(:q) %>
  <%= submit_tag("Search") %>
<% end %>

Which yields:

<form accept-charset="UTF-8" action="/search" method="get">
  <input name="utf8" type="hidden" value="&#x2713;" />
  <label for="q">Search for:</label>
  <input id="q" name="q" type="text" />
  <input name="commit" type="submit" value="Search" />
</form>

This will send the form data to the /search route.

With this approach, each form of your page will use a different route as target for form processing. You could alternatively use the same route and treat multiple use cases inside a single route, but that's not what you're asking.

---

Alternatively (or in addition to) you can also use the formaction attribute in buttons and inputs, in which case you override the form element's action attribute:³

<%= form_tag("/search", method: "get") do %>
  <%= label_tag(:q, "Search for:") %>
  <%= text_field_tag(:q) %>
  <%= submit_tag("Search") %>
  <%= submit_tag("Search On Rails", formaction: search_on_rails) %>
<% end %>

Which yields:

<form accept-charset="UTF-8" action="/search" method="get">
  <input name="utf8" type="hidden" value="&#x2713;" />
  <label for="q">Search for:</label>
  <input id="q" name="q" type="text" />
  <input name="commit" type="submit" value="Search" />
  <input name="commit" type="submit" value="Search On Rails" formaction="/search_on_rails" />
</form>

It's as if the first submit button had a formaction="/search" because it's ommited, therefore the action="/search" in the <form> is used.

---

Other approaches in this question's answers and this one.

---

For your use case, you'll have to make sure the route /customers/questionaire it's consistent in any URI level (absolute, not dynamic). I lack this particular knowledge in Rails to provide a failsafe solution for this case, although it seems it works as expected in the current default behavior.

So the mistake in your code is using url: with a relative URI when you really want an action: in this line:

<%= form_for :anything, url: "customers/questionaire" ,multiple: true do |form| %>

Use instead:

<%= form_for :anything, url: {action: "customers/questionaire"}, multiple: true do |form| %>

See this question and this one.

---

In addition to this, instead of hardcoding routes / urls in the code, there's the url_for helper: https://api.rubyonrails.org/v5.1.7/classes/ActionDispatch/Routing/UrlFor.html

Answer 2

I think you need something like this. Do http://localhost:3000/routes. You will get all the routes in your app

     <%= form_with scope: :post, url: customers_questionaire_path do |form| %>
        <%= form.text_field :title %>
     <% end %>

May be this for lower rails version :)

<%= form_for :customer, scope: :post, url: customers_questionaire_path  do |form| %>
        <%= form.text_field :title %>
        <%= form.submit %>
     <% end %>